Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age: Social Media and Security 3031207335, 9783031207334

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction to Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age
1.1 Introducing Social Media and Critical Security in the Digital Age
1.2 Challenges and Limits to Investigating Social Media and Security
1.3 Take Home Messages
1.3.1 The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries in the Digital Age
1.3.2 Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting the Unexpected on Social Media
1.3.3 The Temperamental Topography of Social Media: The Rise, Rise and Fall of Platforms, Data and Methods
1.3.4 The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory: Social Media and Discursive Emancipation
1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical Insights into the Social Media Securityscape
Bibliography
2 Conceptualising Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age
2.1 Introducing International Relations and Security
2.2 Classical Security Studies: Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism
2.3 The Critical Security Studies World Tour: Copenhagen, Paris and Wales
2.3.1 The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School
2.3.2 Security and the Prospects of Emancipation: The Welsh School of Security Studies
2.3.3 Crossing the Chanel: The Paris School of Security Studies
2.4 From the General to the Specific: More Particular Developments in Critical Security Studies
2.4.1 Voices from Below: Vernacular Security Studies
2.4.2 Making Sense of the Post-9/11 World: Critical Terrorism Studies
2.5 Security and Technology: Social Media and CyberSecurity Debates
2.6 Conclusions on Critical Security Studies, Technology and Social Media
Bibliography
3 Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies
3.1 Introducing Digital Methods, Critical Security Studies and Social Media
3.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Methods
3.3 Digital Research Challenges: Data Access, Demographics and Ethics
3.3.1 Digital Demographics: Lessons from the Fake Warren Buffett and the Twitter Blue Tick
3.3.2 Digital Data: Financial, Ethical and Access Challenges
3.4 Digital Approaches to Critical Security Studies: Methodological Notes
3.4.1 Social Network Analysis and Critical Security Studies
3.4.2 Netnography, “Self-Destruction” and Critical Security Studies
3.4.3 Digital Discourse: Security Speak and Social Media
3.5 Conclusions on Methods, Critical Security and Social Media
Bibliography
4 Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age
4.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age
4.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Terrorism in a Digital Age
4.3 Social Media, Terrorism and Local Themes of Resistance
4.3.1 Social Media, Re-Constructing Terrorism and Urban Identity
4.3.2 Social Media, Terrorism and Football Resistance
4.4 Conclusions on Social Media and Terrorism in the Digital Age
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Bibliography
5 Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age
5.1 Introducing Social Media and Vernacular Approaches to Security in the Digital Age
5.2 Conceptualising Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age
5.3 Investigating Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age
5.3.1 Social Media and Vernacular Resistance to Non-State Actors on YouTube
5.3.2 Social Media and Vernacular Insecurity on Snapchat
5.4 Conclusions on Social Media Vernacular Security in the Digital Age
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
6 Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
6.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
6.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
6.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
6.3.1 Social Media, Security, Democracy and Election Meddling
6.3.2 Social Media, Security, Democracy and Abstention
6.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
7 Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
7.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
7.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
7.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
7.3.1 Social Media, Security and National Identity on Twitter
7.3.2 Social Media, Security and Internationalising Muslim Identity on Twitter
7.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
8 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Studies in a Digital Age
8.1 Introducing Conclusions on Social Media and Security in the Digital Age
8.2 Macro Reflections on Social Media and Critical Security in a Digital Age
8.2.1 The Centrality of Interdisciplinary Approaches
8.2.2 Expecting the Unexpected and Broadening the Empirical Insights into Security
8.2.3 New Platforms, New Insights
8.2.4 Discursive Emancipation and Social Media
8.3 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Concepts
8.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies
8.5 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Terrorism
8.6 Conclusions on Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age
8.7 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age
8.8 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age Social Media and Security

Joseph Downing

New Security Challenges

Series Editor George Christou, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

The last decade has demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in their causes and manifestations and that they invite interest and demand responses from the social sciences, civil society, and a very broad policy community. In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective, but with the end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as the centrepiece of international security agenda became untenable. There has been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis away from traditional approaches to security to a new agenda that talks of the softer side of security, in terms of human security, economic security, and environmental security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this pressing political and research agenda. For an informal discussion for a book in the series, please contact the series editor George Christou ([email protected]), or Palgrave editor Alina Yurova ([email protected]). This book series is indexed by Scopus.

Joseph Downing

Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age Social Media and Security

Joseph Downing Senior Lecturer of International Relations and Politics Department of Politics, History and International Relations Aston University Birmingham, UK Visiting Fellow European Institute London School of Economics and Political Science London, UK

ISSN 2731-0329 ISSN 2731-0337 (electronic) New Security Challenges ISBN 978-3-031-20733-4 ISBN 978-3-031-20734-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © metamorworks/Shutterstock This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book owes the most to the two data science specialist that were instrumental in producing the data analysis for some of the examples in this book. To Wasim Ahmed and Richard Dron, this book owes a huge debt of gratitude. Also, from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, Jennifer Jackson-Preece was key in introducing me to the critical security literature and has been positive and encouraging throughout my academic career thus far. Additionally, Estelle E. Brun provided significant coding support and very mature scholarly reflections on some of the examples in this book.

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Contents

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Introduction to Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age 1.1 Introducing Social Media and Critical Security in the Digital Age 1.2 Challenges and Limits to Investigating Social Media and Security 1.3 Take Home Messages 1.3.1 The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries in the Digital Age 1.3.2 Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting the Unexpected on Social Media 1.3.3 The Temperamental Topography of Social Media: The Rise, Rise and Fall of Platforms, Data and Methods 1.3.4 The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory: Social Media and Discursive Emancipation 1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical Insights into the Social Media Securityscape Bibliography

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Conceptualising Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age 2.1 Introducing International Relations and Security

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Classical Security Studies: Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism 2.3 The Critical Security Studies World Tour: Copenhagen, Paris and Wales 2.3.1 The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School 2.3.2 Security and the Prospects of Emancipation: The Welsh School of Security Studies 2.3.3 Crossing the Chanel: The Paris School of Security Studies 2.4 From the General to the Specific: More Particular Developments in Critical Security Studies 2.4.1 Voices from Below: Vernacular Security Studies 2.4.2 Making Sense of the Post-9/11 World: Critical Terrorism Studies 2.5 Security and Technology: Social Media and CyberSecurity Debates 2.6 Conclusions on Critical Security Studies, Technology and Social Media Bibliography 3

Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies 3.1 Introducing Digital Methods, Critical Security Studies and Social Media 3.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Methods 3.3 Digital Research Challenges: Data Access, Demographics and Ethics 3.3.1 Digital Demographics: Lessons from the Fake Warren Buffett and the Twitter Blue Tick 3.3.2 Digital Data: Financial, Ethical and Access Challenges 3.4 Digital Approaches to Critical Security Studies: Methodological Notes 3.4.1 Social Network Analysis and Critical Security Studies 3.4.2 Netnography, “Self-Destruction” and Critical Security Studies 3.4.3 Digital Discourse: Security Speak and Social Media

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CONTENTS

Conclusions on Methods, Critical Security and Social Media Bibliography

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Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age 4.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age 4.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Terrorism in a Digital Age 4.3 Social Media, Terrorism and Local Themes of Resistance 4.3.1 Social Media, Re-Constructing Terrorism and Urban Identity 4.3.2 Social Media, Terrorism and Football Resistance 4.4 Conclusions on Social Media and Terrorism in the Digital Age Appendices Bibliography

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Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age 5.1 Introducing Social Media and Vernacular Approaches to Security in the Digital Age 5.2 Conceptualising Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age 5.3 Investigating Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age 5.3.1 Social Media and Vernacular Resistance to Non-State Actors on YouTube 5.3.2 Social Media and Vernacular Insecurity on Snapchat 5.4 Conclusions on Social Media Vernacular Security in the Digital Age Appendices Bibliography

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Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age 6.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age

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Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age 6.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age 6.3.1 Social Media, Security, Democracy and Election Meddling 6.3.2 Social Media, Security, Democracy and Abstention 6.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age Appendices Bibliography 7

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Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age 7.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age 7.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age 7.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age 7.3.1 Social Media, Security and National Identity on Twitter 7.3.2 Social Media, Security and Internationalising Muslim Identity on Twitter 7.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age Appendices Bibliography Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Studies in a Digital Age 8.1 Introducing Conclusions on Social Media and Security in the Digital Age 8.2 Macro Reflections on Social Media and Critical Security in a Digital Age 8.2.1 The Centrality of Interdisciplinary Approaches 8.2.2 Expecting the Unexpected and Broadening the Empirical Insights into Security 8.2.3 New Platforms, New Insights 8.2.4 Discursive Emancipation and Social Media

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Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Concepts 8.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies 8.5 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Terrorism 8.6 Conclusions on Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age 8.7 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age 8.8 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age Bibliography

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age

1.1 Introducing Social Media and Critical Security in the Digital Age Social media has become one of the key components of the contemporary global political landscape. From the circulation of horrific ISIS recruitment videos to the will they/won’t they/oh they have de-platforming debate about the Twitter account of the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, “social media” is never far from the political headlines. However, the headlines, as always, can be simplistic, sensationalist and essentialising of “social media”. Is it really true that jokes, spread online, won the 2017 presidential election for Donald Trump? (Nussbaum, 2017). Giving primacy to the role of “digital” social media narratives above and beyond the archaic “analogue”, structural and social factors seems to have become quite a trend. If we are to interrogate such claims with scholarly rigour, a set of questions, some even beyond the scope of this book raise their head. To what extent is social media “new” or simply an extension of, or means of articulating, old social cleavages and grievances? Is social media really the driving force behind a populist social movement, rooted in rising inequality and the de-alignment of voters from traditional left-wing parties that become increasingly concerned with middle-class (Thomas, 2022), young (Rosentiel, 2008), urban (Thompson, 2019) voters at the expense of their traditional power bases? Clearly, social media needs to be situated with

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_1

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the much broader social context in which it is only one part of the much larger political jigsaw of the early twenty-first century. However, essentialisation of social media does not stop at discussions of its posited unstoppable capacity for social and political transformation. Rather, “social media” is used unproblematically as if it describes a unitary entity with clear and unidirectional implications. However, this catch all term homogenises an incredibly bewildering array of technologies, platforms and communication technologies with significantly varying and multifaceted possibilities for human use, interaction and subversion. Indeed, there is a lot to be said for abandoning the term “social media” as essentialising and homogenising to the point of uselessness. For example, to lumber telegram, a smart phone app used for private communication under the same umbrella term as YouTube and Twitter seems extremely reductivist. Another common folie in the discussion of communications technologies is presenting them in ahistorical terms. The communications “revolution” of social media, opening up new avenues for those at the “bottom” to contest the political agenda of those at the “top” is arguably not as new, or as revolutionary as it seems. Indeed, the possibilities afforded by technology for challenging those in authority was not something lost on those seeking to disrupt political, religious and social order since with technology since antiquity (Reuter, 2019). However analogue this may sound, the “digitalisation” of communication technologies and how these have sent ripples through the political and social order is also something not unique to the adoption of the smart phone. Indeed, there is a much longer historical relationship between media, security and international relations. The revolutionary Islamist messages carried on the cassette tapes of the Iranian revolution, Algerian FLN and Egyptian Muslim brotherhood changed the political field of North Africa and the Middle East, ushering in a dark and sinister era of conspiratorial anti-systemic politics that shook the foundations of authoritarian regimes long before anyone could conceive the possibilities of tweeting about the Arab spring. Indeed, the deposed Shah of Iran and the bloodied and battered regime of ex-freedom fighters in Algiers saw first-hand the devastating consequences of how long-neglected structural social grievances could be given new life and meanings through communications technologies.

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It is important to note that these are only a few selected examples of a wide range of questions that one could pose about the relationship between social media, politics and security more generally. Thus, grafting this confounding array of technological possibilities to a body of theoretical and conceptual work as diverse critical security studies is no straightforward task. Once again one needs to beg the question if the elite-centric, discursively pre-occupied Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) should or can be considered under the same rubric as Critical Terrorism Studies (Breen Smyth et al., 2008; Jackson et al., 2007) or the emergent vernacular security studies. Also, to what extent do ongoing debates about the intersecting questions of gender, race and ethnicity in the security field (inter alia Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020) undermine the validity of the CSS endeavour entirely? Opening up these twin Pandora’s boxes could be seen to set up this book to fail miserably in its primary purpose to give answers to the desperately needed discussion of how the CSS needs to reconsider its key conceptual underpinnings in the wake of a sea change in communications and discourse because there are too many “critical security studies” and “social medias” to enable a modest work of circa 80,000 words to make any significant headway. Indeed, this is a discussion that has, and is, going to take up volumes of work in the field in the coming decades as these two hydras will only grow more and more heads, and become ever more intertwined in an awkward and at times combative embrace. It is better than to consider this book a starting point for some of these discussions and a point of departure rather than a point of arrival. Reminiscent of a joke I share frequently during research design seminars with my students, it is always wise for an academic to recommend the need for further research in the field not only for instrumental reasons of future utility and employment, but because the process of intellectual enquiry into the social world around us is never-ending.

1.2 Challenges and Limits to Investigating Social Media and Security It is also important to set the limits of this book before we go on to offer insights into what it seeks to address. The first important point to note is the empirical limits of this book from a number of perspectives. It is important to foreground that there are indeed several “missing chapters” that would warrant significant engagement and discussion. These include

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empirical areas such as environmentalism, gender and state-based violence as areas where social media has important intersection with them. Indeed, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has thrown up an array of questions for scholars of technology and conflict, and more specifically the use of social media by the open-source intelligence community and the geolocation of targets from social media pictures are likely going to be important points of enquiry for years to come. Conceptually, the decolonial turn in social theory has received some attention from critical security scholars (Adamson, 2020) and could have easily been a chapter in its own right as these debates rage on social media. Additionally, there could have also been a far wider range of empirical contexts included in this book as the engagement between critical security studies and social media “in the wild” knows no geographical, linguistic or platform-based boundaries. Thus while acknowledging the well-documented Western bias in security studies (Bilgin, 2010) more generally, this book acknowledges its Western case study bias. Additionally, it is important to remain critical of critical security studies throughout, as this is a field of theory that has numerous issues. An important and difficult one to square here has been the focus of much of critical security studies on “emancipation” (Aradau, 2004; Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Wyn Jones, 1999) which while admirable, has been often poorly defined and operationalised in the literature. That said, perhaps in a thin sense, social media offers at the bare minimum a sort of discursive emancipation where some previously excluded voices find a place to articulate narratives of security.

1.3

Take Home Messages

It is also important to offer some key, if brief, summaries of the “take home” messages from the enquiries undertaken in this book. 1.3.1

The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries in the Digital Age

The first of these relates to how attempting to understand the myriad ways that social media relates to security requires the shattering of disciplinary boundaries. This is a core commitment of critical security studies (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Jarvis, 2019), and scholars have gone as far as to argue that boundary nationalism plays a role in “Hiding the struggles and hierarchies inside these discursive activities” (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 5).

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As such, the early critical work done in the discursive turn by the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) which broke open the security studies discipline has been widely critiqued for a poorly defined sense of interdisciplinarity and a “methodological elitism” (Stanley & Jackson, 2016) that focuses too much on the speech of dominant actors (McDonald, 2008, p. 563). An important intervention here can be found in the calls to include a range of disciplinary approaches into security studies, such as the tools of sociology and criminology (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Perhaps the most extreme articulation of this has been found in the vernacular school of security studies which advocates a theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) which “allows for greater fidelity to the diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). However, while this is important, it is not only in the everyday that this finds resonance, but in a range of contexts. This leads onto the second key take home message of this book. 1.3.2

Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting the Unexpected on Social Media

The second take home message from this book in examining social media from the perspective of critical security studies is that it is important to remember to “expect the unexpected”. When examining social media empirics, security can pop up in the most unusual places, articulated by those without any previous security pedigree, with users becoming influential in social media debates on security who again have no previous security credentials. This comes hand in hand with opening up security studies to a range of disciplinary perspectives. As mentioned, in the most “extreme” form of this, the theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) of the vernacular school opens up security in significant ways. However, this relies a lot on the view of the observer of security, and begs the important questions are we prepared to see constructions of security in unexpected places? In scholarship on critical terrorism studies, we can see a turn to examining questions of how terror becomes embedded in popular culture such as TV shows (Erickson, 2008; Holland, 2011) and comic books (Veloso & Bateman, 2013). This demands that scholars and observers take seriously that security is increasingly found in unexpected places, articulated in unexpected ways. Social media offers users numerous, if not endless, opportunities for users to articulate themselves however they like. Put simply, one needs to be prepared to not only see

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security where they don’t expect, for example in a meme, or on YouTube, but also to see it articulated and constructed in ways we don’t expect—for example through adapted football slogans as seen in later chapters of this book. As such, important opportunities to study security on social media can come from anywhere, and can take the most unexpected and counterintuitive directions. A valuable observation has been made in relation to identifying methods and methodologies in security studies that “Both method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59). This shows that there is still significant debate about what “counts” as worthy of attention. Social media, and the analysis to come in this book, demonstrates that not only do the disciplinary boundaries of security studies need to be broadened by social media, but that the empirical boundaries of security studies need to also be dramatically revised if we are to get to grips with social media. 1.3.3

The Temperamental Topography of Social Media: The Rise, Rise and Fall of Platforms, Data and Methods

As we begin to think about how method and methodology can help us to consider what “counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59) when it comes to engaging with social media, we need to move beyond the ongoing debates about the diversification of international relations. This is because as much as debates in international relations are dynamic and fluid, the social media landscapes move just as fast. For example, in 2022 Facebook loosed overall users’ figures for the first time in its history (Dwoskin et al., 2022). While this does not mean the giant will close anytime soon, it does demonstrate how the landscape can dramatically shift. This is also true for the tools and data access questions that are central to social media analysis. This is well-illustrated by a particularly valuable resource that was one of the first I consulted when considering a pivot into social media research which was a blog piece on “Using Twitter as a data source” (Ahmed, 2021). This resource is referred to as a “long running series” having been published initially in 2015, then re-published in 2017, 2019 and then 2021 (Ahmed, 2021), rather than a fixed point blog entry. Indeed, the 2021 edition was necessitated by a sea change in social media research—Twitter’s release of an “academic research product track” offering academics free access to its data (Ahmed, 2021). This demonstrates something important—the rapid, unpredictable and enormous change that the tools and data of social media analysis

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go through constantly. This is only part of the story as new platforms emerge, become popular, and indeed less popular over time. Thus, there is no easy answer here, and the most important take home from these issues and changes for aspiring scholars of social media and security is to be extremely flexible and open to new tools as well as new social media platforms. An example of adaptability here in this book is the application of netnographic methods to the app Snapchat in part to overcome the “self-destructing” (Bayer et al., 2016) ephemeral nature of its data which means it is neither kept on the company’s servers, nor is it downloadable for off-line analysis as Twitter data is. These data access issues clearly don’t make the platform less important for analysis—and indeed they may actually render it even more important given that users can be sure that their data will disappear, but it did require some imaginative methodological thinking. 1.3.4

The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory: Social Media and Discursive Emancipation

The emancipatory burden weighs extremely heavily on critical theory, and thus by extension it places an equally important burden on critical security studies. Indeed, some have argued that that without the emancipatory dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). A range of critical security scholars have attempted to promote this commitment to emancipation, from the Welsh school (Wyn Jones, 1999) to the Paris school (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). In particular, the Welsh school changes the nature of the world and emancipates individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that they may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). However, this is not a burden that critical security studies has shouldered well. The Copenhagen school, who kicked out the discursive, and to a certain extent, the critical turn in security studies (Buzan et al., 1997) has received critique for lacking a clear normative commitment to an emancipatory agenda (Filimon, 2016), focusing more on security elites. This is set against a broader, and indeed troubling, observation that theory has failed to bring better societies into existence (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 21). In particular, the lack of concrete examples of “what types of

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institutions and relationships might characterise a more emancipated society” and “the commitment of critical theorists to emancipation became merely metaphysical in character” (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35). While critical security scholars have attempted to theorise emancipatory alternatives (Aradau, 2004), this is still an area in which the theory is found lacking. Add to this, despite early optimism that social media would be an “emancipatory” technology, a much more complex picture has emerged. Social media has been conceptualised as locked in a complex struggle between emancipation and control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015), where causes can use social media for emancipatory projects, but thus open themselves up to new forms of censorship, surveillance and control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). Added to this are the many questions of the commodification of social media (Allmer, 2015), and how it is being dominated by commercial interests, and indeed commercial interests that are at times diametrically opposed to emancipatory causes. Add to this, the observation that a significant digital divide exists, where global inequalities exclude many from the ownership of the devices, and the fast data connectivity required, and indeed even the literacy to be able to compose a tweet (Ali, 2011). This is also not just a simple global north/south divide, as this divide can exist within national, regional and even local contexts (Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006). This leaves us at quite a pessimistic juncture, where critical theory, critical security studies and social media all fail at providing viable recipes for global emancipation. This is without even begging the question as to whether or not the “powerless” even see themselves as such, nor want to seek emancipation through the dismantling of global capitalism at all, and who may instead prefer to take their chances under capitalism than to either wage an uncertain class struggle or wait to be emancipated by theorists at universities thousands of miles away. However, perhaps all is not lost when we consider questions of discourse and voice on social media. Scholars that have argued that a central tenant of critical approaches to social media needs to include an emancipatory component (Allmer, 2015) perhaps offer an insight. This has taken the form of advocating “a normative and partial approach giving voice to the voiceless and supporting the oppressed classes of society” (Allmer, 2015, p. 7). Here, despite a digital divide, the failures of emancipatory theory and the control and commodification of social media output, there is a glimmer of hope that communications technologies

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can at least give a voice to the voiceless, a sort of “discursive emancipation”. Here, from a critical security perspective and highlighted by some examples provided in this book, individuals who would not have previously been able to articulate security narratives, and how actually may have become influential in security debates, have been significantly aided in this by social media technologies. This dovetails well with the “vernacular security studies” literature that seeks to highlight the importance of everyday voices and how they construct security from a range of perspectives (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019) and it is likely that for a number of years to come, a range of synergies between vernacular security studies and social media data will become ever more apparent.

1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical Insights into the Social Media Securityscape Indeed, it is examining a range of theoretical observations and their synergies with social media that begins this book. Security studies has been on a journey in the past century. From post-World War II realism (inter alia Gorski, 2013; Huysmans, 1998) to the “critical turn” of the Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris schools (inter alia Buzan et al., 1997; Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Floyd, 2007), the field has developed in tandem with, and in opposition to a range of political and social developments and events as well as technologies. However, an important caveat of this is to not fall into the trap of seeing these theories as discrete and separate. It is important, as many have argued (Floyd, 2007) not to see various “schools” of CTS as discreet and isolated entities—they owe each other and a far broader range of social theory considerable intellectual debts. Thus, it is vital to consider the synergies and contradictions between them, for example in the “hierarchical” understandings of security speak in the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) and the “flat” understanding of security speak in vernacular security studies (Jarvis & Lister, 2012). This sets the ground for an informed understanding of how these bodies of work can, or cannot, account for the disruptive potential of social media. Chapter 2 of this book seeks to highlight key aspects of these theories that are important for the coming discussion of how critical security studies informs social media. The discursive turn, marked by the Copenhagen school’s schema of (de)securitisation (Buzan et al., 1997) was a significant shift in security studies. Here, the Copenhagen school had

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“established itself—for European scholars at least—as the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security” (McSweeney, 1996). An important take-home for this book that emerges from the Copenhagen school can be seen in the ability to see security as a construct—i.e. the material realities of security only go so far in deciding if a particular situation is threatening. Thus we must also examine the way that actors, in this case security elites “speak” threats into existence, and on what grounds they make claims about particular situations requiring particular responses. Cleary for an understanding of social media, this ability to examine narrations of security, and to consider that security is not simply an objective material reality, but part of a political process of threat construction is valuable. However, the elite-centric notion articulated by the Copenhagen school, that elites speak security and the audience listens, is very much complicated by changes in communications technologies and struggles to consider the disruptive potential of social media. This is not the only critique of the Copenhagen school, as it has been argued to be thin on emancipatory commitments (Filimon, 2016; Hynek & Chandler, 2013) and lacking in considering the racialised dynamics of global and domestic security situations (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020). It also does not have the monopoly on critical understandings of security and while laying some crucial groundwork for critical takes on security problems, we are necessitated to delve further into the murky depths of the theoretical pond. Bigger on emancipatory commitments is the Welsh school of security studies (Wyn Jones, 1995). The Welsh school, like much of critical security studies, emerges in the wake of the end of the Cold War. This was buoyed by the optimism of the end of the bi-polar conflict and the new possibilities this could bring, and the developing “interregnum” of this old system of states and an emerging borderless world community (Wyn Jones, 1995). The Welsh school committed to the idea of bringing about change and aiding in the production of a new world that would emancipate individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that they may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). This “emancipation” has some significant rhetorical synergies with some narrations about the possibilities of social media to bring voice to the masses, especially in the early, more positive, days when it was seen that social media could spark a wave of democratisation, peace and stability (Persily & Tucker, 2020). Clearly both ideas, that the end of the Cold War and the emergence of social media would bring about a utopian state of emancipation, have proved

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somewhat naïve. However, in approaching social media, it is important to consider how an albeit thin notion of discursive emancipation might be possible to a certain extent on social media, as it undeniably does give “voices to the voiceless” and enables a range of actors to construct security narratives that would have previously been excluded from doing so. However, to understand the range and scope of these new security narratives, we need to go further as the tools of international relations are not sufficient to do this. One key take-home of the Paris school can be seen in its rallying cry to smash disciplinary boundaries and hierarchies (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This in fact proves to be a sage and highly insightful observation in the context of critical security studies and social media because precisely the broadening of the narrative security landscape on social media requires new tools to understand how individuals subvert, contest and contort security in tandem with a range of sociological, criminological and anthropological means. If it seems superfluous for the Paris school to deny a geographical label and to instead propose to be known as the “Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology” (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018), then the anthropological and sociological parts are spot on. The journey does not stop here, however, as the field of critical security studies remains in constant flux, responding as it does to the flux of the global system. Two exciting developments in the last two decades have been the more recent additions to the landscape of critical security studies in “Vernacular” security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) and critical terrorism studies (Richard Jackson, 2007). Given that social media gives the audience the ability to “speak” security and become an important part of the security discussion, vernacular security studies has an important part to play in conceptualising how binary, hierarchical understandings of relationships of the “audience” and the “elite” central to critical security studies (Buzan et al., 1997) begins to break down on social media. However, it is not as simple as embracing a completely “flat” conception of security speak on social medial, as metrics such as influence enable a small number of non-security elite users to reach large audiences in sometimes ephemeral ways. Critical terrorism studies fits in here as it seeks to apply the critical, constructivist perspective to the sub-field of terrorism (Richard Jackson, 2007). Rather than narrowing the focus, it also seeks to broader the discussion of terrorism away from problemsolving perspectives so beloved of security elites, but to understand the

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much broader context in which terrorism is constructed. This has even gone as far as to include how terrorism infiltrates into, and is constructed by, popular culture (Holland, 2011), an observation that validates the vital importance of bringing in disciplinary approaches such as sociology, cultural studies and anthropology into the security discussion. However, just because there is some novelty in bringing social media into greater dialogue with critical security studies, this does not mean we are the first to produce scholarship on social media. In fact, far from it as social media, and indeed more broadly questions of technology in politics and security are well advanced fields in many ways, and one that can give insights into the discursive, emancipatory and interdisciplinary positions of security that critical approaches offer. Additionally, the synergies between technology, politics and IR are nothing new and have a history almost as long as humanity itself (Reuter et al., 2019). It is important here to consider the literatures on critical approaches to social media to get a better handle on the difficult relationship between critical theory and social media technologies. For example, while early theory highlighted the emancipatory potential of new media technologies, the picture has become far more complex (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). This is because not only are social media companies’ capitalist entities and thus commodify social media output (Allmer, 2015), they can also be monitored by governments and give new opportunities for authoritarian governments to surveil and control their populations (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). Building on these observations, Chapter 3 of this book examines the important questions of method and methodology. This is because social media presents an enormous, diverse and ever-changing cornucopia of “data” and opportunities for study that can be quite frankly bewildering and intimidating. Access costs, and indeed whether it is possible to access data at all, change constantly between and within platforms. However, “data” questions are only one part of a much larger discussion about approaching social media that is required here. Critical security studies has done a lot in the past decade to both broaden and deepen the method and methodological approaches that the field offers, resulting in the production of some excellent tomes containing important insights (inter alia Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015; Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This demonstrates both that solid foundations have been laid in considering the vital question of exactly what critical in critical security studies actually means from a method’s perspective (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This is

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important because this sets the scene for a larger discussion, and theme within this book, about the diversity of social media platforms and the need to nuance what constitutes “social media” in any given context that we are analysing. Indeed, a key insight is that “both method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59) and it is important to make a case as to why social media deserves greater attention from critical security scholars. Indeed, “doing it right” in terms of research ethics in social media is far from settled and straightforward and how we both sample and analyse social media for insights into security requires reflection. It is important to consider the limitations of social media research, especially in light of some of the key commitments of critical security studies. If we are to make even the thinnest claim about discursive emancipation, it is important to understand how the demographics of social media are extremely skewed and unrepresentative. The digital divide both between the global North and South, and indeed even within particular societies, massively complicates notions that the globally “oppressed” can use digital media as a liberation technology because frankly they often do not have access to it. This chapter then moves on to offer some initial reflections on operationalising methods for social media research in terms of some methodological notes on approaches used to produce some of the conclusions to come in later chapters of this book. This includes some reflections on social network analysis, netnography and aspects of discursive methods that not only can be used by security researchers when considering questions of social media, but also inform the empirical chapters to come. Chapter 4 forms the first chapter that seeks to bring in specific empirics into questions of critical security and social media through questions of terrorism. “Terrorism” and indeed the post-9/11 “war on terror” have been key features of the post-Cold War security landscape (Council of Councils, 2021). More recently, the emergence of ISIS and the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan concert hall attacks in Paris have once again catapulted “terrorism” into the public eye (Titley et al., 2017). Critical terrorism studies has emerged into this context to bring the constructivist orientation offered by critical security studies to understand how terrorism is not only a set of objective security occurrences, but also a social construct that should be studied away from the “problem-solving” concerns of classical terrorism studies (Herring, 2008; Jackson et al., 2007; Richard Jackson, 2007). This opens up not only the ability to

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investigate terrorism without foregrounding the need to “solve it” as a problem, and thus look into the broader dynamics of terrorism, but also to see on what terms it is constructed as a meaning-making exercise. These are both vital observations for considering how communications technologies and terrorism can be seen to relate to each other, and indeed how this relationship changes. Indeed, while “the 9/11 spectacle of terror was a global media event” (Kellner, 2007, p. 123) projected into the living rooms of people the world over, 14 years later the emergence of #JeSuisCharlie enabled one to dialogue with, and re-construct terrorism from their smartphone (An et al., 2016; Titley et al., 2017). While critical terrorism studies has found application in a range of contexts, such as the UK prevent strategy (Qurashi, 2018) and social media as a place of communication by extremists and a place for possible recruitment (Davey & Weinberg, 2021; Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019), there has been little application of critical terrorism studies to social media. This chapter seeks to offer two examples that demonstrate two aspects of the way that terrorism is discussed and constructed on social media to establish the unexpected symbolic and discursive repertoires that users use of social media to discuss terrorism. This is tackled thematically, looking at the Twitter responses to both a threat made against France by ISIS and the response to the Manchester bombing in the UK. Both of these examples demonstrate the importance of the disciplinary plurality of critical security studies because it allows us to conceive of local identity structures, such as crime, violence and football, and how these become important in constructions of terrorism. Dialoguing with the literature that examines the broader culture context in which terrorism is constructed, this example demonstrates that when examining social media, instead of bringing terrorism into culture, bring culture into the construction of terrorism. Chapter 5 continues this dialogue with questions of social media and critical security studies by specifically considering in more depth the recent, exciting, vernacular turn in security studies. This is aided greatly by vernacular security studies overt theoretical position of “theoretical emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This “allows for greater fidelity to the diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This is important when considering a key mission of the critical turn in security studies is to increase the range of “what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015). Thus rather than schools of critical security thought such as the Copenhagen school which begin with the assumption of the primacy of

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elite discourses of security (Buzan et al., 1997), this approach enables a far greater range of security speech to be captured and analysed. A caveat, however, is to remember that the social media landscape is not completely democratic nor “flat”, as we have seen the issues with access and control that social media presents (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). This said, the vernacular turn does enable us to consider important security questions as will be examined through the two examples included in this chapter. The first example examines YouTube as a site of the construction of vernacular security debates by offering an in-depth examination of a video uploaded by a football YouTuber that responds to ISIS terrorism in France. This demonstrates the importance of local, and at times offensive and profane, discourses in further pushing the boundaries of how vernacular security studies relate to social media technologies. The second example pushes vernacular security studies research further by flipping one of its key themes. It has to date championed how individuals from below contest and re-construct security imposed from above in local idioms (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012). However, the example of a netnography conducted on the application Snapchat analyses how those seeking to foster insecurity from below discuss this insecurity in their own local idioms. This demonstrates the importance of both the methodological innovation of examining apps with ephemeral data (Bayer et al., 2016) in security studies, but also highlights the way that users go to great efforts to “brand” their insecurity in specific ways. This draws on the sociological and criminological literature on deviance, space and place. Chapter 6 shifts gears from examining social media and security from below, to considering the intersection of social media, security and the political system “from above” in terms of constructions of democracy. Both the increases in polarisation in advanced democracies, and the radical transformation of the media landscape has once again thrust threats to democracy into the headlines. It has long been argued that a key aspect of democracies have been free and independent media outlets (Baker, 2001). However, social media radically alters this idea, which formed in the context of free and fair “old” media outlets. While this book refutes simplistic arguments about social media and democracy, for example that memes won Trump the US presidential election (Nussbaum, 2017), it is clear that the rise of social media has important implications not only for democracy more broadly, but also more specifically for questions of democracy and security. This is because the new social media

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online landscape presents significant security questions to the practice of democracy. The second round of the French 2017 presidential election offers two examples through two very different hashtag campaigns with quite different implications for democracy. The first is within the context of a “hack and leak” operation of data from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team (Vilmer, 2019). It is argued here that rather than just looking at the hack and leak part of this, it is also important to examine the broader context of social media discourses that relate to it under the rise of the hashtag #MacronLeaks to understand which kinds of discourses about democracy emerge. The coverage on Twitter is dominated by anti-Macron sentiment that delve into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, connect Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France and refute Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the critical discursive turn in the security studies enables us to go further in examining how the social media environment can construct democracies, and indeed direct threats to them, in connection with other key themes in contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism. The second example examines abstention under #SansMoi7Mai that highlights how political distrust is constructed on social media shines a light on something quite different in terms of security and democracy. This is through a hashtag that promotes voter abstention. This highlights how social media discourses of abstention are centred on themes of political distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018). However, this becomes problematic in light of contemporary trends in political distrust away from distrust in particular politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019). Within the discussion of non-participation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai distrust in the French media and in the broader political system as at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge. This highlights how discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014). Chapter 7 intervenes in examining questions of identity on social media. Identity emerges as important in critical security studies in the context of the end of the Cold War, and how identity concerns emerged as key security concerns in conflicts such as the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Identity concerns have retained their centrality to questions of security in a range of contemporary arenas, which have catapulted

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social media to the fore as a key area where identity concerns are created, contested and discussed. These include #BlackLivesMatter and the quest for greater social justice (Mourão & Brown, 2022), as well as the specifics of the various groups that seek to articulate particular notions of what an Islamic identity means in a political context such as ISIS (Awan, 2017). Examples are presented here of how identities are contested and reconstructed in a range of arenas in the social media context. There is the example of the emergence of the hashtag #JeSuisAhmed in the context of the Charlie Hebdo attacks (Arceneaux, 2018) which co-occurs with, and sits alongside, discourses which support and contest #JeSuisCharlie. Here, narratives emerge in a range of ways that re-construct both Ahmed, and by extention French Muslims as defenders of the nation and as important aspects of state security. A range of discourses and symbols are deployed on social media that construct Ahmed as an important defender of the freedom of speech upon which the French republic is founded, and comments seek to nuance questions of where Muslims stand vis-àvis terrorism in France by discussing how a Muslim dies as a police offer attempting to protect French values. The second example is a comparison of the globalisation of Muslim identity debates in the wake of security situations in the UK. Both the Grenfell tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing resulted in significant social media activity. The social media activity in the wake of both events demonstrates the way that security and identity debates become internationalised on social media in a context of the contested nature of Muslim identity and its broader place in the global context. The two examples also demonstrate something that critical security studies needs to consider when approaching questions of social media in what a notion of security elite means in the social media context. Both users presented here become important in the debates and in a sense could be considered “elites”, but this is not only unpredictable, but also extremely fleeting and ephemeral. As such, it is difficult to reproduce the notion of elites when it comes to security speech on social media. While discussing the intersection of British security concerns, and the role of Muslims within them, the debate can become highly decontextualised. Thus these debates can, and often do, become about the more general questions of Islam and terrorism, and the nexus of identity and security on social media, resulting in discussions that lack nuance and structure. Thus, while it can be argued that social media makes security debates more diffuse, and can offer users an albeit “thin” kind of discursive emancipation, as they can contribute, and even

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become elite in debates about security and identity, this processes are complex and multifaceted.

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Thomas, M. (2022, May 11). How the democrats became the party of the rich. UnHerd. https://unherd.com/2022/05/how-the-democrats-becamethe-party-of-the-rich/ Thompson, D. (2019, September 13). How democrats conquered the city. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/briefhistory-how-democrats-conquered-city/597955/ Titley, G., Freedman, D., Khiabany, G., & Mondon, A. (2017). After Charlie Hebdo: Terror. Bloomsbury. van der Does, R. (2018). Political institutions, trust, and security. https://www. leidensecurityandglobalaffairs.nl/articles/political-institutions-trust-and-sec urity van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2006). Digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. Poetics, 34(4), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2006. 05.004 Veloso, F., & Bateman, J. (2013). The multimodal construction of acceptability: Marvel’s Civil War comic books and the PATRIOT Act. Critical Discourse Studies, 10(4), 427–443. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2013.813776 Vilmer, J.-B. J. (2019). The ‘Macron Leaks’ operation. Atlantic Council. Wyn Jones, R. (1995). ‘Message in a bottle’? Theory and praxis in critical security studies. Contemporary Security Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/135232695 08404119 Wyn Jones, R. (1999). Security, strategy and critical theory. Lynne Rienner.

CHAPTER 2

Conceptualising Social Media and Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age

2.1

Introducing International Relations and Security

Security studies has been on quite a journey in the past century. From post-World War II realism (inter alia Gorski, 2013; Huysmans, 1998) to the “critical turn” of the Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris schools (inter alia Buzan et al., 1997; Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Floyd, 2007), the field has developed in tandem with, and often in opposition to, dominant trends in the broader global security evolution. For example, the increased salience of concerns around terrorism in light of the post-9/11 war on terror, spawned its own mini-field of critical analysis, in terms of the emergence of critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007). It is important here to note that when considering the critical turn that “CSS takes on a larger burden” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 35). This is precisely to attempt to provide the means by which to analyse security that can keep pace with developments in the field. Thus the field is immense, diverse and highly contested. This is even prior to mentioning developments in social media and the technological landscape. To enable some progress on this book’s raison d’etre of patching the revolutionary and monumental social media developments to the already gargantuan field of CTS, it is important to lay some of the conceptual foundations that this book will then draw upon. This second chapter thus sets the theoretical groundwork for the enquiry into social media and critical security studies. This requires an understanding of the emergence of security studies, the turn to critical © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_2

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security studies and more importantly how they conceive of discourse and communication. This is fundamental to understanding the disruptive potential of social media. This chapter proceeds as follows. Firstly, it introduces the emergence of security studies in the classical realist and liberal understandings of security. This gives the broader, state-centric, elite-centric conceptions of security that dominated the field in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is important to understand because of the narrow field of study out of which critical interventions later emerge. It is important to be nuanced here and not to construct “traditional” security studies as a “non-reflective” “straw man” (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). Even seemingly stable and concrete ideas within “traditional” security studies, such as a national interest, were always shifting, changing and diverse (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). With this said, it remains evident that both realism, with its focus on states seeking power in an anarchical international system, and the liberal modification that sought to add to this the importance of the internal composition of states offers little in the way of conceptions upon which social media can be understood. Secondly, this book uses this discussion of classical security as a springboard into understanding the emergence of the critical turn in security studies. Of particular importance here is conceptualising the move in security studies away from a concentration on the material aspects of security, i.e. the size of standing armies or structures of security governance emerge. The resulting shift in focus to socially constructivist understandings of security (Buzan et al., 1997) will be discussed, but also the broader underpinnings of the critical school of social theory to give a broader context to understanding critical security studies. Indeed, it is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the change that the Copenhagen school facilitated. The Copenhagen school had “established itself-for European scholars at least-as the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security” (Mcsweeney, 1996). The chapter then moves to go into detail about the various approaches to critical security studies— including the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997). Important here is the discursive turn and the opening up of the field by the work of the Copenhagen school. Their focus moves from either the inherent powerseeking nature of states (realism) or the composition of states (liberalism) onto discourse and the “speaking” of security by security elites. Here, while not completely excluding the material or state-centric aspects of the security equation, the Copenhagen school sought to argue for the importance of threat construction and how this can also be understood as a

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central means by which insecurity occurs in the international system. This has, after some thirty years of informing the security debate, been robustly critiqued but remains an extremely important intervention into the very creation of the critical field of security studies. It is also important to note that the Copenhagen school is not alone in applying a critical lens to the security debate. The Welsh school sought to set out an agenda for critically understanding security but with one caveat—an increased focus on normative aspects of security. Indeed, a critique of the Copenhagen school is its lack of normative commitments to emancipation. Indeed, some have argued that without the emancipatory dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). It is into this discussion about the necessity and importance of a normative, emancipatory dimension that the Welsh school of securitisation intervenes. This emerges out of the optimist at the end of the Cold War and the hopes raised across the political spectrum by the possible opportunities that the end of this bi-polar conflict could bring. For the Welsch school, the post-Cold War era was an “interregnum” between the decline of the “old” Westphalian system of states and an emerging borderless world community (Wyn Jones, 1995). To them, this opened the way for an “emancipatory” project that sought to not only describe the world as is, but also to go further and to change the nature of the world and emancipate individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that they may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). This “emancipation” has some significant rhetorical synergies with some narrations about the possibilities of social media to bring voice to the masses, especially in the early, more positive, days when it was seen that social media could spark a wave of democratisation, peace and stability (Persily & Tucker, 2020). Clearly, with nearly thirty years of hindsight, there is little evidence that the Welsh school, like many other intellectual movements who advocated increased emancipation at the end of the Cold War, have achieved much if any, significant progress. However, an important aspect of the Welsh school that still has purchase, is its valuable advocacy, like many CSS perspectives, of opening up of the security studies field much more broadly (Wyn Jones, 1999). If perhaps the material and mental emancipatory ambitions of the Welsh school remain unfulfilled, then perhaps being

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part of the call for the emancipation of broader areas of study as counting as part of IR has been partially fulfilled. It is in this broadening of the field that this book finds the Paris school of security studies of particular interest. One key issue with the Paris school if, however, is its inbuilt ambiguity. This goes as far as an overt rejection of being referred to as a “Paris” approach, and the redefinition away from the city itself to the “Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Here, they seek to highlight that a “Paris” approach is much broader in terms of its approaches, and cultural and geographical influences than either the city of light or the broader Francophone world (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). The Paris school makes a bold claim, that it should not be considered a theoretical school or a particular line of thought per se, but rather a “problematisation” (problématique) to enable the questioning of established knowledge (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Thus while it is somewhat difficult to pin down the key tenants of a Paris school of securitisation, even being seemingly requested not to utter its very name, it is however possible to take away a clear observation that is important for the coming discussions in this book—the integration of a broader range of data and approaches to the study of security. This is of upmost importance, as the revolutionary nature of this assertion is easy to forget given the progress that some aspects of international relations have made through a greater dialogue with sociological concepts and theories. Thus, discussing the Copenhagen (Buzan et al., 1997), Welsh (Wyn Jones, 1999) and the Paris schools (D. Bigo, 2008) is a vital step in bringing out the synergies and contradictions between these different schools. A key argument is that while they all have bases in both social constructivism and critical theory, the various ways in which they apply them have different implications for bringing a focus on CSS and social media studies. More specifically, given the discourse focused nature of the social media landscape, and of many aspects of critical security studies, it is of particular importance to begin to unpick synergies and contradictions between notions of “security speak”. It is important, as many have argued (Floyd, 2007) not to see various “schools” of CTS as discrete and isolated entities—they owe each other and a far broader range of social theory considerable intellectual debts. Thus, it is vital to consider the synergies and contradictions between them, for example in the “hierarchical” understandings of security speak in the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al.,

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1997) and the “flat” understanding of security speak in vernacular security studies (Jarvis & Lister, 2012). This sets the ground for an informed understanding of how these bodies of work can, or cannot, account for the disruptive potential of social media. Where they cannot, suggestions would then be made about the empirically and theoretically informed discussions to come. Beyond this, there is an observation about the scale of the theories themselves. In a sense these Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris theories are at the macro scale of the analysis of security—i.e. the broader international system, the range of security challenges and the broader workings of security within it. While this is a gross over simplification as their approaches are far more diverse and multifaceted, it does offer somewhat of a necessary delineation between them and two more niche theoretical schools that have significant importance within this book. These are the more recent additions to the field of critical security studies in “Vernacular” security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) and critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007). Given social media gives the audience the ability to “speak” security and become an important part of the discussion vernacular security studies has an important part to play in conceptualising how binary, hierarchical understandings of relationship of the “audience” and the “elite” central to critical security studies (Buzan et al., 1997) begin to break down on social media. However, it is not as simple as embracing a completely “flat” conception of security speak on social medial, as metrics such as influence enable a small number of non-security elite users to reach large audiences in sometimes ephemeral ways. Critical terrorism studies fits in here as it seeks to apply the critical, constructivist perspective to the sub-field of terrorism (Jackson, 2007). Rather than narrowing the focus, it also seeks to broaden the discussion of terrorism away from problem-solving perspectives so beloved of security elites, but to understand the much broader context in which terrorism is constructed. This has even gone as far as to include how terrorism infiltrates into, and is constructed by, popular culture (Holland, 2011). It is also important to look up and out from the specifics of the social media landscape when we consider how social media can be related to critical security studies. Specifically, social media is, after all, a “technology” and the synergies between technology, politics and IR are nothing new and have a history almost as long as humanity itself (Reuter et al., 2019). Building on this observation and considering that social media is one in a universe of cases of technology, security and politics, the final

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task of this chapter is in looking specifically at questions of this chapter to importantly tease out the key means by which scholarship accounts for this relationship. While it is important to consider the contending understandings the various schools of critical security studies have of technologies of security, we need to go further. For example, the Copenhagen school’s later work began to consider the “little security nothings” where technologies of security become an increasingly large parts of the fabric of daily life with phenomena such as CCTV (Huysmans, 2011). While an interesting starting point in considering the possibilities that communications technologies open up, this remains underdeveloped. Additionally, it is important to consider how the Foucaultian understanding of security bureaucracies in the Paris school (D. Bigo, 2008) can be applied to how large social media companies work in their inadvertent “doing” of security in de-platforming users and patrolling the digital landscape.

2.2 Classical Security Studies: Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism To understand the broader interventions, and indeed the founding raison d’etre of the critical security studies field, it is important to first consider against what their critique is made. It is fair to say that in this sense, critical and classic security studies exist in a far more symbiotic and intertwined relationship than may at first be clear—for without “traditional” security studies and its practitioners which remain in the world, it is not possible to build nor sustain a critique of their methods, assumptions and practices. Realism, perhaps one of the founding theories of contemporary security studies, has received renewed attention in the past year owing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This horrific, violent and destructive conflict has echoes of the early twentieth century when realism was articulated, being a state-to-state conflict analysed through the lens of state power and pursuit of state interests through violent means. However, the renewed attention lavished on realism has been negative, owning to the critiques of the views of John J Mearsheimer and his lack of sympathy with Ukraine’s aspirations to look towards the EU, NATO and democracy. Mearsheimer roots his commentary in an observation that elites in the USA and Europe “tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy” (Mearsheimer, 2014, p. 2). In his

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opinion, as early as the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, it is important to remember that “realpolitik remains relevant—and states that ignore it do so at their own peril” (Mearsheimer, 2014, p. 2). Here, he points to a provocation of Moscow by the USA and the European Union (EU) in projecting their power into Eastern Europe where he highlights the efforts made by the West in “peeling Kiev away from Moscow” as part of a broader effort to spread Western values (Mearsheimer, 2014). This view has been rightly critiqued as deeply problematic for sidelining the autonomy of Ukraine, and seemingly advocating ignoring their preference to lean into the West. However, it is important to note that this articulates a very narrow and limited and problematic conception of realism. It is important to dig deeper than to understand the key assumptions of realism. The point here is not to trace the historical development of realism from antiquity to the present day but to give a brief sketch of some of realism’s key assumptions about the world of international security to understand the context against which critical security studies emerges. Realism is also far more diverse and contested internally, this is often visible from the outside, with its different proponents drawing on differing and competing notions of such fundamental ideas within the school as human nature. The key principles of realism, such as the pursuit of self-interest and the futility of higher moral aspirations, can be seen in an early classical realist “politics among nations” (Morgenthau, 1948). This draws strongly on ideas of universal laws of nature that apply to stateto-state relations across time and space, and where the state, and thus the elite within it, can “master” the intricacies of international politics through understanding and obeying these laws—i.e. that national interest, defined as securing greater power, is the basic cut and thrust of international politics, or “realpolitik” (Morgenthau, 1948). A second key feature of the realist school is the notion that states operate on these powerseeking terms within, and in part because of, the anarchic nature of the international system that has no higher authority than the state (Waltz, 1979). As such we can easily draw issues here with a homogenisation of states, noted in the critique of realism being Eurocentric and unable to explain the historical evolution of states in Asia (Kang, 2003) nor Africa (Herbst, 2015). Additionally, realism is also extremely state-centric. However, a differing conception of international politics, also with long historical roots, also came to prominence in international politics— liberalism. A key idea here is that states can cooperate to build a system

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of peace and security with shared benefits (Kant, 1795). Thus begins to emerge notions of the democratic peace theory—where democracies are unlikely to go to war due to the unpopularity of bloodshed within the electorate (Kant, 1795). This was given further momentum in the postWorld War II state system, where it was noted that, while democracies do fight wars, generally it is not with other democracies because of capitalist ties, and thus the spread of capitalism and democracy globally could, if not bring conflict to an end, dramatically minimalise it (Keohane & Jr, 1977). Within this, something else becomes a key feature of the international system as a result of the horrors of the European great wars of World War I and World War II—international institutions, such as the United Nations, which aim to foster cooperation that challenge the realist understandings of states locked in an eternal struggle for power and influence. Constructivism emerged out of observations similar to liberalism about the roles of institutions, norms and ideas in IR towards the end of the twentieth century. Constructivism paid more attention directly to these norms and ideas, such as democracy and human rights in an attempt to add the role of these more diffuse concepts into the equation of how and why states behave in the ways that they do in an anarchical international system (Adler, 2012). However, it was met with a significant degree of scepticism by mainstream international relations (Hopf, 1998) because of its attempts to give a place to the more ambiguous role of norms and ideas in shaping the behaviour of states in the international system. Thus it stood accused of being more interested in “meta theory” than empirical research (Adler, 2012). Constructivism in IR emerges from the broader developments in social constructivism more broadly which is important to understand in some detail given that this school of thought also greatly informs critical security studies. Social constructivism has a long and storied history in the social sciences since it was coined by Berger and Luckman (1966). The conceptual underpinning of this school of thought contests that reality is socially situated and that knowledge is constructed through interaction with social stimuli in works such as the invention of tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1984). This is a conceptual tradition that is strongly rooted in the relational nature of social experience and that meaning is relational—i.e. it emerges in interactions with individuals, or indeed in the international system, other states, institutions and non-state actors. Thus while clearly not primarily rooted in a materialist understanding of security espoused

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by theories such as realism, it is important to understand that even in a broader social science sense, social constructivism does not wholly exclude the material world from this process of meaning-making. Social science scholars have advocated more “realist” view of social constructivism, such as Elder-Vass (2013) and Gorski (2013). This seeks to combine the beneficial aspects of social constructivism with the realist work of scholars such as Bhaskar (2008) to bring the role of social reality and social structures back into the work of social constructivism. Thus constructivism in an international relations sense builds upon their complex interplay of material realities and social meanings in its attempt to understand the complex global system of states and occurrences within it. This is a vital observation as we both draw to a close of our sketch of the more “classical” understandings of international relations and security, and begin considering the understandings of international security that centrally situate the role of construction. This is by no means exhaustive, but rather a brief and vulgar outlining of classic takes on international security against which critical security studies emerge.

2.3

The Critical Security Studies World Tour: Copenhagen, Paris and Wales

Critical security studies has blossomed from its genesis in the late 1990s. The emergence of critical security studies can be seen as a product of the tension between the problem-solving orientation dominant in security studies at the end of the Cold War vs a deeper reflection on security and indeed the nature of theorising itself (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). This “critical” turn in security studies owes much of its genesis to the Copenhagen school’s early forays into considering how security is not simply an objective fact but also something that is “constructed”, and not only constructed, but constructed through “discourse”. Indeed, the Copenhagen school has “established itself-for European scholars at leastas the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security” (Mcsweeney, 1996). However, this has significantly widened and can be considered critical in several different ways. The Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) emerged in response to classical security studies and sought to integrate social constructivism into the creation of security threats, while the Welsh (Wyn Jones, 1999) and Paris (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) schools draw more overtly on critical theory of Marx and Foucault, respectively. There are a couple of observations here that

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are important in situating these theories in the broader range of security studies. Firstly, the Copenhagen school seeks to be closer to traditional security studies (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 35). Additionally, it is important to not construct “traditional” security studies as a “non-reflective” “straw man” (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). Even seemingly stable and concrete ideas within “traditional” security studies, such as a national interest, were always shifting, changing and diverse (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). They have also been subject to significant application, reformulation and critique, even within the question of what constitutes the “critical” in “critical security studies”. Some scholars have argued that without an overt commitment to an emancipatory dimension of theory and practice, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). Thus, in this definition the Welsh school, with its commitment to emancipation, would score highly, and the Copenhagen school with its lack of an overt commitment to emancipation scores poorly. While this is a meta point that is important to consider—i.e. what is the point of theorising security, this book does not advocate the ex-communication of theories based on their lack of emancipatory potential per se. Rather the point here is assess their architecture and how their structures offer possible synergies with social media developments, or as is also the case, identifying aspects of their architecture that require further work to be able to take account of social media. It is worth considering the boundary issues present within the context of the critical turn, because of the expansion of the field and how this increasingly wide boundaries of critical security studies necessitate questioning how far should/can it go (Browning & McDonald, 2013) and thus does pushing the definition of security further and further mean we are actually discussing nothing? (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 37). However, there have been some progress in this regard with scholars suggesting that the sub-discipline can be defined by three key commitments: 1. Fundamental critique of realist approaches (Browning & McDonald, 2013) 2. Seeking to understand the politics of security and what security does politically (Browning & McDonald, 2013)

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3. Questioning the ethics of security and what progressive practices look like with respect to security (Browning & McDonald, 2013). Within this, this ethics dimension is about figuring out normative positions—i.e. what defines the “good” when it comes to security (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 1). This creates a need to “reformulate” or “escape” the sometimes problematic language and logic of security altogether (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 236). What will become apparent in the following discussion of the three key pillars of the critical turn is interesting, if sometimes confusing, synergies between them. Additionally, the different approaches offer different conceptual and practical suggestions as to the best ways to operationalise these commitments. 2.3.1

The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School

The “critical” turn in security studies owes much to the Copenhagen school of securitisation from its publication of “security: a new framework for analysis” (Buzan et al., 1997). The Copenhagen school has “established itself-for European scholars at least-as the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security” (Mcsweeney, 1996, p. 81). While it is important to acknowledge the robust critiques of the Copenhagen school, as it has many shortcomings, it is still important as a cornerstone of the critical security studies landscape. Copenhagen school is a welcome intervention, but it is lacking in numerous areas (Howell & RichterMontpetit, 2020; McDonald, 2008). It is important to begin with the key contributions of the Copenhagen school before moving onto in more details the key critiques. The origin of the Copenhagen school lies in an opposition to the classical, and especially “realist” understandings of security in the international system. Discussions of nationalism, ethnic conflict and migration not only were not discussed in classical security studies, but could also not be discussed, due to the state-centric focus of traditional security studies (Buzan & Wæver, 1997). This state-centric approach, with its Cold War focus on standing armies, “objective” military strength, etc., could not account for these threats that emerge from more diffuse forces that while not divorced from the activities of states, owe their importance to a much wider range of forces.

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A key starting point here sits in questioning the primacy of the state and the military in conceptualisations of security (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 1). While acknowledging the issues with including “everything” under the security rubric and thus rendering it imprecise and meaningless, the Copenhagen school openly advocated the widening of notions of security and taking security discussions to previously neglected arenas by the narrow focus of orthodox security studies (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 1). Here, they highlight an important aspect of global developments at the time by juxtaposing the narrowing of the security agenda to the military and nuclear obsessions of the Cold War era with the parallel “emerging” areas of environmental, economic, identity and transnational crime concerns (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 2). The fact that these observations appear archaic, self-evident and “old” are to a certain extent because of the success of the Copenhagen agenda. Here, the security is more than simply the “political” but rather: They have to be staged as existential threats to a referent object by a securitizing actor who thereby generates endorsement of emergency measures beyond rules that would otherwise bind. (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 5)

This establishes a simple relationship where elites speak security, and laypeople listen. This is important because the focus here is discourse and discourse clearly is applicable in many ways to the landscape of social media, whether as text, images or memes. An important feature of the Copenhagen school that complicates a simple application to social media is the elite focus. Thus, it employs a “methodological elitism” (Stanley & Jackson, 2016) which has characterised much security and terrorism research. A key issue is a too narrow focus on the speech of dominant actors (McDonald, 2008, p. 563). Obviously, dominant actors exist on social media, but the speaking of security, and indeed who is important in the speaking of security, needs to be pushed much further (Downing & Dron, 2020). However, neither do new media technologies totally “flatten” the discursive landscape as clearly opening a Twitter or YouTube account does not turn one into a security elite with a persuasive argument that convinces a given audience. To unpick this discursive landscape, it is worth considering that the conceptualisation of discourse by the Copenhagen school goes further. As such in the Copenhagen view, it is not enough that a security issue is simply “spoken” about in a broad sense, but must follow quite specific

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rules of how it is spoken about and indeed in relation to what it is threatening, i.e. an existential threat to a referent object (Buzan et al., 1997). Here, security is about the “survival” of entities such as the state, government, territory or society (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 21). It delves even deeper, arguing that the quality of existence is important as what is under existential threat will have a role in defining what is threatening, i.e. the referent object being threatened will define what the threat is (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 22). Also threat establishment is intersubjective (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 25; Stritzel, 2007) and thus depends upon a relationship between the audience and the security actors. This endeavour makes significant claims about its ability to deliver robust understandings of the security landscape: securitization studies aims to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who securitizes, on what issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what results. (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 32)

However, this remains extremely under-defined and poorly theorised. This is vital because it is through this relationship upon which the key relationship of the Copenhagen school rests—the move to “securitise” itself. This intersubjective securitisation done by an actor to an audience is what takes issues from “normal” politics (de-securitised) to “emergency” politics (securitised) which can be seen as a more extreme form of politicisation (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 23). To unpick a little the problematic nature of the audience/elite relationship within the Copenhagen school, we need to dig a little deeper. This relationship is of particular importance because it is one that is ripe for disruption and subversion by the new/social media landscape. Within this discourse alone however is not sufficient for “securitisation” but only a “securitising move” until somehow accepted by the “audience” as such (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 25). The argument goes that the “audience” needs to somehow accept the “breaking of rules” made legitimate by some kind of “existential threat” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 25). This understanding of security and indeed “securitisation” has clear common-sense appeal and remains influential within the field, but it lacks a certain precision, or indeed ability to both identify the exact audience nor the threshold at which a “securitising move” sufficiently convinces an “audience” to allow securitisation to take place. This is problematic, for example, in a democracy is the “audience” of a securitising move the electorate, the members

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of a legislature or indeed, an opaque government inner circle? Examples like the Blair government joining the US invasion of Iraq, despite low levels of public support and high levels of direct protest demonstrate the unresolved complexities of the actor-audience relationship even at the relatively simplistic level of domestic, democratic politics. Indeed, the complex, undulating and diffuse landscape presented by developments in communications technologies only serve to add significantly more variables and nuances to this process. This provides two questions worth considering for the application to the social media context. The first is that if securitising moves are so poorly defined in the Copenhagen school, then this clearly raises issues for the application of these ideas to the new context of the digital, new media dominated, world. If such a key concept is poorly defined in the original context, it is difficult to see how its applicability can be readily assessed. On the contrary, this imprecision offers a certain degree of conceptual openness to a range of securitising moves of various forms. This discussion of securitising moves is important because it brings us to another interesting, yet problematic, assumption of the Copenhagen school that can only be further disrupted by social media—the question of who are security elites? The Copenhagen school is quite specific here in that: What we can study is this practice: Who can “do” or “speak” security successfully, on what issues, under what conditions and with what effects? (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 27)

but The relationship among subjects is not equal or symmetrical, and the possibility for successful securitization will vary dramatically with the position held by the actor. (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 31)

This brings us to two important observations for an investigation of critical security studies and social media. First, apparently, we “can study” securitising practices through constructions of security. Thus the discursive landscape of social media offers some rich empirical material to study these securitising moves. The second important observation is the discursive landscape is not flat but rather hierarchical. Thus the possibility of

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successfully deploying a securitising move depends very much on the position of the actor and their authority, which give them a status as the “generally accepted voices of security” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 31). While it is important to note that their “power is never absolute” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 31), they still have significant purchase on the discursive landscape that those without this authority do not have. This emphasis of the Copenhagen school’s conception of securitisation as something achieved through the speech of dominant actors has been significantly critiqued (McDonald, 2008, p. 563). Again this is ambiguous, and further complicated by the important notion that “nor is anyone excluded from attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 31). Clearly within this lay significant ambiguities but the dynamic nature of security constructions and its intersubjectivity and contestability are important aspects that have purchase within social media landscapes that enable an ever more complex audience-actor intersubjective relationships. Scholars have highlighted the importance of clearly defining the relationship between audience and actor and the process involved in the acceptance, contestation or both, of security threats (Balzacq, 2011). Here, it should be noted that scholars have proposed expanding the securitising event to conceptualise of the broader context leading up to securitisation (Stritzel, 2007). This would require: working with three layers of securitization: (1) the performative force of an articulated threat text, (2) its embeddedness in existing discourses and (3) the positional power of securitizing actors. (Stritzel, 2007, p. 377)

Thus, here as well as considering the actor making the securitising move, this conception adds something important for the possibility of including social media sources in the security lexicon—namely considering the embeddedness of a securitising move in existing discourses. If we are to take seriously, as I think we should, claims that social media is becoming an important ground within which a range of political issues are being discussed, subverted and re-ordered, then any securitising move needs to be considered in this broader context. However, this does little to fill in the key gaps of “why particular representations of threat resonate with particular communities, and how particular actors are either empowered or marginalized in ‘speaking’ security” (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). Thus here, we should not settle simply

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for “securitization” being used as shorthand for the construction of security, nor should it be a given that it captures the most important dynamics of security (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). Broader, normative concerns also emerge regarding the implications of prioritising dominant voices and traditional security discourses (McDonald, 2008, p. 565). This is important for patching critical security studies to social media because this conceptual and empirical broadening of the field of security speak offers the ability to go some way to enable social media to be accounted for as key place of security speak and practice. The Copenhagen school goes further and argues that “Actors should not be the fixed point of analysis, but rather the practice of securitization” (Buzan et al., 1997). This is because “The socially constructed is often sedimented as structure and becomes so relatively stable as practice” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 35). This presents an important aspect of employing social constructivism in this context once again asserting that the constructed are not separate and discreet from the material world but rather remain embedded within them and a construction of threat can very much translate into real world policy and give lasting practices and structures of security. A range of security-based concerns have gained traction on social media (an example being Black lives matter) that have existed in dialogue with arguments about the change of security structures and practices in the material world. One issue here is the lack of a clearly defined concepts of either “politics” or “politicization” (Aradau, 2004). As such, it is difficult within the constraints of the Copenhagen school dichotomy to have an intermediate state between the securitised and the de-securitised. Also, the Copenhagen schools approach is lacking due to its focus on discourse as speech and as words. This is clearly limited in a context of social media where outputs become far more diverse and important discourses on security come in a range of graphical representations. Here, Hansen (2011) sets the scene for this contribution by arguing for the importance of images as text in international relations, with the caveat that images must be understand through, and alongside the context supplied by accompanying text and speech (Hansen, 2011). Hansen (2011) goes on to argue for the growing importance of mobile phone cameras changing the relationship between producers and consumers and between audiences and elites (Hansen, 2011). This needs to be theorised more fully given the complex and symbiotic nature of the new media landscape. It is not sufficient to understand that the individuals can make

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multimodal outputs with a cellular telephone, but that how, why and where these cultural artefacts are shared is not simple and straightforward. Additionally, Hansen’s analysis (Hansen, 2011) needs to also think about the increasing “meme-ification” of political discourse where it is not images rendered meaning by text per se which are important, but rather how user-generated content allows the manufacture and/or manipulation of images and texts specifically designed to talk security. Away from the specifics of the mechanism through which the Copenhagen school argues that securitisation takes place, it is also important to consider the broader normative critiques of the theory, of which we can broadly sketch three that have implications for the cases to be analysed later in this book in terms of patching critical security studies to social media. Firstly, there is the question of the key normative mission of the Copenhagen school and the issues of the securitised/desecuritised dichotomy. This normative mission is namely peace promotion and providing recipes for de-securitisation. This is because the Copenhagen school does not set out to be simply explanatory—it carries an important normative burden—i.e. that it is that they aid in peace building through identifying the negative process of securitisation and its dangers for democracy and accountability. They also identify a normatively positive alternative in “de-securitisation”, i.e. the ability to de-construct a security threat back into the realm of “normal” politics, its rules, accountability and due process. Thus, not in all senses across all times and places is de-securitisation normatively persuasive. Minority rights are an important example in that while de-construction for de-securitising purposes may work well for individual migrants, extending this to minority groups as a whole could endanger their very existence and without some kind of “societal security-ness” would result in the death of the conception of a minority as somehow different (Roe, 2004). However, it has been noted that while the Copenhagen school is quite advanced in its description of “securitization”, it is far less advanced in its conceptualisation of the apparently normatively more persuasive “de-securitisation” (Aradau, 2004). This has significant implications for undermining the normative power of the Copenhagen school project. Additionally, this dichotomy has been subject to critique in its overtly Schmittian conception of security as inherently negative and oppressive (Roe, 2012). Thus, it is important also to consider how security can also be a positive force (Roe, 2012) as some issues of human security require emergency responses. Additionally, there is the question of

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context in deciding if securitisation is positive or not. Thus, there is much more than the issue of security speak at stake in deciding if the securitising or de-securitising are positive or not (Floyd, 2007) and requires much more focus on context than on abstract theorising of the inherent nature of security processes. There have been solutions proposed to these issues including the possibility of modifying notions of de-securitisation to be more focused on a “Universality” and “recognition”, emancipatory agenda (Aradau, 2004). This issue of emancipation is the next key critique of the Copenhagen school that requires some attention. The second key normative critique of the Copenhagen school is in its problematic relationship with an emancipatory agenda. There is a significant emphasis in the critical studies literature on the need for critical approaches to shoulder an emancipatory burden. Specifically in critical security studies, it have been argued that without the emancipatory dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). However, this is quite an ambitious proposition for a school of academic theory, and one that finds a more central position in the Welsh school of security studies and thus as a broader question will be dealt with in greater depth there. Clearly at stake when scholars argue for emancipation are broader structural changes to a range of global inequalities—including access to security, a voice in global politics and the rampant socio-economic inequalities of the current system. While clearly not promising an end to these structural issues, social media and the technological revolution it is part of has been touted as having emancipatory dimensions in terms of voicing a greater range of discourse on key security issues, allowing their challenging and subversion (Downing, 2020) in addition to offering the ability to challenge authoritarian regimes (Wolfsfeld et al., 2013). Indeed much of the early scholarship on this topic saw a significant potential in technological advances to bring into being a new wave of democratisation and mass mobilisation against authoritarian regimes. With hindsight, the reality is obviously far more complex, but this questions of the ability of social media to “democratise” and possibly “emancipate” discourses and communications of security. The nuances,

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complexities and issues with this will be themes returned to in this book repeatedly. The third key stream of critique of the Copenhagen school that is important for the themes addressed in this book are some of the issues it has in dealing with inequalities of security. It is inherent that the politics of security will serve some and not others, and that security for the many rather than security only for the few is inherently indicative of positive securitisation (Floyd, 2007). It is, however, important to note that security is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and the “insecurity” of some groups within liberal system, such as blacks in the USA and their consistent experiences of either police violence (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020) or death in violent crimes at the hands of other blacks is a tradeoff that is required for broader security within the American context. This is significantly problematic and has rightly drawn significant attention in recent years as the liberal peace that the Copenhagen school is based upon promoting has significant issues in the USA and beyond that the Copenhagen school seemingly cannot adequately conceptualise (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020). However, this is not a critique without counter critique—in particular the author’s poorly defined use of the term “racist” prior to applying such a clearly negative slur to range of securitisation works (Hansen, 2020, p. 380). This highlights a broader question about security and exclusion, however, and one that is difficult to answer. Some scholars have argued that the very nature of security is exclusionary. Here, order and security can only be had if embedded in relations of exclusion “inclusion and community can only be had at the price of exclusion and adversity” (Behnke, 2006, p. 600). Exclusion is an important element of the discursive landscape of social media. These trade-offs are sometimes evident in terms of freedom of speech and security debates within the social media context where it is seen that “security” in discursive and by extension possibly in physical, human security, requires the access of some to be limited to the “discursive means of production” of social media platforms to protect human, societal, nation and international security more generally. This was a key defining rationale in the limiting of ISIS access and use of social media platforms as a means to limit recruitment of foreign jihadists to the Levent, Iraq and beyond (Prothero, 2019).

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2.3.2

Security and the Prospects of Emancipation: The Welsh School of Security Studies

The Copenhagen school does not have a monopoly on applying critical approaches to security studies. Other important insights into applying a critical approach to the question of international security can be found within the Welsh school of security studies. Welsh school advocates, like many CSS perspectives, the opening up of the security studies field much more broadly (Wyn Jones, 1999). But the important question posed is that does opening up the field to such an extent render the discussion pointless, does making everything about security mean that we are actually discussing nothing? (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 37). This does not have to be the case if we move from grand theorising of security down to the specifics of well-defined empirical contexts. Social media does enable such a discussion to take place precisely because the data sets examined can sometimes be clearly defined, and the various meanings of security in a particular empirical context can be teased out without the need for these observations to be the be all and end all of the security landscape. Indeed, this is a long-term problem with theorising more broadly, in that it the need to generalise at a certain point will mean something is neglected. Indeed, theories in my opinion are better viewed as incomplete pieces of a larger puzzle, useful in limited ways, rather than grand theories of the human experience. In a similar vein to the Copenhagen school, the Welsh school argues that this broadening of the field is required due to the post-Cold War era dominated by the decline of the Westphalian system of states and a developing “interregnum” of this old system of states and an emerging borderless world community (Wyn Jones, 1995). Thus, the new challenges to global security require this expansion of the field otherwise theorists, policymakers and academics will be left wanting in their conceptual tool box. In this sense, it is important to be clear what distinguishes the Welsh school from the Copenhagen school. Addressing some of the earlier critiques of the Copenhagen school that it is too normatively “thin” when it comes to working towards greater global emancipation, the Welsh school draws on Marxist influences to have some important normative commitments. At its heart, an “emancipatory” project that seeks to not only describe the world as is, but also to go further and to change the nature of the world and emancipate individuals from both the physical

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and mental constraints that they may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). This is set against a broader, and indeed troubling, observation that theory has failed to bring better societies into existence (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 21). In fact, one could argue that the opposite is accurate, as the abstraction of theory in terms of eugenics, anti-Semitism and conflict ideologies removes the very human element from broader discussions of social life that is so important for peace and security to flourish. In short, a homogenised enemy group, whether Jews, the police, “black men” or “white men”, have a human security that seems far easier to violate than an individual with a relatable human story. This is a problem acknowledged by Roe (2012) in arguing that a degree of securitising is inherent in a group identity, even if this securitisation can at times be positive in securing recognition of certain group rights. The critique of theory in the Welsh school goes even further in identifying the lack of concrete examples of “what types of institutions and relationships might characterise a more emancipated society” and “the commitment of critical theorists to emancipation became merely metaphysical in character” (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35). Thus, in a similar vein to the lack of recipes for “de-securitisation” in the Copenhagen school, despite this being their key normative commitment, is reflected in a broader issue within critical approaches where they advocate the positive aspects of “emancipation” without giving a clear road map to this emancipation neither in real-world examples nor in how theorists can achieve this. In fact, this critique goes deeper given the obsession in the Welsh school with a Marxist notion of emancipation, with the problematic underpinning of false consciousness and both the homogenisation of the proletariat and the stripping of agency of individuals, rendering them cogs in the wheel of capitalism (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35). This commitment to emancipation has also been raised as a central aspect of critical approaches to social media (Allmer, 2015). This has taken the form of advocating “a normative and partial approach giving voice to the voiceless and supporting the oppressed classes of society” (Allmer, 2015, p. 7). However, in the vein of the Welsh, and as we will see later the Paris schools of securitisation, solving the numerous inequalities and structural oppressions of the global system is quite an ask for academic theory and research. However, hinted at here is giving a voice to the voiceless, and perhaps this “thin”, discursive emancipation is a more realistic and attainable goal of both the broadening of the security studies agenda, as well as the ability of social media to include a larger range of voices on politics

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and security. We again need to be cautious here as “voice” does not translate to action, as individuals and groups seeking to use social media for emancipation are caught in a paradox of social media giving them a voice, but at the same time being censored by the social media platforms themselves all the while governments are using these platforms to monitor and pre-empt them (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). A further important point here that needs to be considered in light of considering the Welsh school and the possibility of its applicability to the context of social media lies in the relationship between such critical theories and technology more broadly which is not as straightforward as it may seem. Critical theory had a complex relationship with notions of technology as an emancipatory instrument for society. On the one hand, technology was seen as having a positive potential for a more emancipated society, even if this could not be realised under class-ridden capitalism (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35). However, it was also conceived of as the embodiment of instrumental rationality and “a means to control and manipulate” (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35) to the detriment of human freedom. This can also be seen as equally as paradoxical, and indeed useful, in considering the double-edged sword that is social media. On the other hand, the emergence of new media offers both opportunity for radical emancipation, if primarily discursive, but also offers opportunities for the entrenchment of dominant power hierarchies. Indeed, both are likely to be occurring at the same time in the same context which makes both producing definitive answers more generally, but also more specifically about the question of emancipation difficult. Additionally, an important observation can also be found in the notions of culture deployed in critical theory approaches such as the Welsh school (Jones & Jones, 1999). This is because “culture” and indeed popular culture have important impacts on, and indeed stem from, social media activity. There exists a paradox here, of the critical school being hostile to popular culture, yet being the primary conceptual means through which popular culture has become understood and analysed. This has been picked up in an observation that “local cultural production values ape ever more closely those of the global media players and the media generally has an ever greater impact on the lives of those exposed to it” (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 37). This is an observation that poses important questions for social media. Clearly the “global media players” relevant in 1999, in the era of MTV and globalisation, are not the same who are influencing the social media landscape. While social media offers a means

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by which new forms of media and culture can flourish, it is also in a more synergistic relationship with traditional media than it may first appear. It is important to consider that the two are not mutually exclusive. However, a discussion of the Welsh school raises an important observation about the problematic notion of discussing critical approaches to security as if they exist in isolation and as discreet intellectual endeavours. It has been argued that the Copenhagen and the Welsh schools are the most well-developed within this field (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 237) but also offer significant possibilities for synergies and integration, and can be bought together (Floyd, 2007). This relies on bringing together the more positive, emancipatory possibilities of the Welsh School, with the more negative conceptions of security from the Copenhagen school, to enable a conceptual framework that fosters the possibilities of positive securitisation, negative securitisation and desecuritisations (Floyd, 2007, p. 327). Thus a key take-home from this is once again the need for a nuanced, contextual and evaluative consideration of each security situation and refraining from applying a prima facia label to a given construction of security. However, this project has failed to adequately address the latter two key questions—either what the politics or ethics of security actually are— thus falling short on their key commitments and bringing into question what exactly is the point of a critical security studies discipline at all? (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 237). Only supplied “loosely liberal conceptions of the desirability of dialogue, the realization of basic needs and the minimization of harm” (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 237). What is required are “more nuanced and contextual understandings of security dynamics and practices” (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 237). 2.3.3

Crossing the Chanel: The Paris School of Security Studies

The final “geographically defined” school of critical security studies is the Paris school. It is important to note from the outset that the school resists the very designation of being geographically bounded or associated with Paris itself (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This comes from an important observation that with these geographical labels, one sets up an essentialisation and over simplification of the positions of each school. Thus, there is a risk of over simplifying CSS by setting up an artificial opposition between the main schools of thought on the

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subject—something observed about those schools named after cities— Paris, Copenhagen and Aberystwyth (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This is an important aspect to grasp, but also should not be overstated as the different schools of thought or indeed wider approaches within the field of which there are many more than simply these three, do offer differing perspectives on security even if they have some common roots in critical theory. Additionally, it is also important to note that there is significant contestation of CSS schools of thought (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020) and thus the field remains far from one that is settled. The Paris school rejects notions that security and insecurity exist discreetly and that we rather need to come to terms with the “consubstantiality of security and insecurity” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 11). Here, we can see security and insecurity as existing in the sense of a “Mobius strip” where they are embedded into intimate, and inseparable, relationships. This analogy is interesting in that it highlights the intersubjective nature of security and insecurity and the difficulty in defining the boundaries between the two. They are also correct to identify the problematic “common-sense” understandings of security and insecurity as problematic and obscuring the power relations that sit behind these definitions. Another interesting observation is about the context in which the critical turn in security studies emerges that the Paris school seeks to see through the paradigm of global North/South relations. In one of the founding works of the Paris school, a key idea was to widen the scope of security studies in order to avoid rampant over simplification of security issues and also to bring in a far wider disciplinary engagement to the security studies field (D Bigo et al., 1990). The Paris school is correct to highlight the move in security studies discourse with the end of the cold, from the West/East threat of the bi-polar confrontation to the North/South axis where the “insecurity” of the South is a threat to the “security” of the North (D Bigo et al., 1990). It is important to highlight that this conventional understanding neglects the interdependence of both constructs of the North and South, specifically how the North is not simply a victim of insecurity of the South, but rather can work to promote the insecurity of the South. Thus the importance of the understanding of power relations here is important and a key insight that can be gained from the Paris school (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018).

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A problem with discussing the Paris approach is the actual rejection of the “Paris” approach, and the redefinition away from the city itself to the “Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). In one sense they are however correct, to reject the “culturalisation” of the body of work as something particularly French or Parisian, in that it has reached audiences and prominence beyond the French-speaking world. Here, they seek to highlight that a “Paris” approach is much broader in terms of its approaches, and cultural and geographical influences than either the city of light or the broader Francophone world (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Rather than a theoretical school or a particular line of thought they argue, it should be seen as a “problematization” (problématique) (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This is part of the broader position of the school that it seeks to reject the hierarchies of knowledge that have been such an important feature of mainstream international relations and security studies. This means that the Paris school takes a clear position that ideas about security from sociology, criminology or history are no less important than those that evolve from IR in understanding the international security context (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). In the opinion of the Paris school, this pre-occupation with boundary nationalism is important in “Hiding the struggles and hierarchies inside these discursive activities” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 5). Clearly, in the opinion of the Paris school, a disciplinary nationalism is harmful in grasping the true nature of the international system, something in line with other schools of thought on critical security studies and their insistence on the broadening of the field, but perhaps more overtly concerned with disciplinary approaches. They see a negative situation in the field where this disciplinary nationalism goes even further, in that it necessitates disciplines to compete on behalf of their claims for a particular “truth” around what security actually is in a broad sense (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Within this, it is also important to examine disciplinary nationalism that “show that each disciplinary knowledge organizes the network of relations to security very differently” (D. Bigo, 2008, p. 10). This must be taken into consideration when applying tools from a range of disciplines to the analysis of an extremely complex security arena such as social media in that one needs to be overt about the disciplinary baggage, positive or negative, that comes with taking an idea and applying it to a very different conceptual or empirical context.

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However, the Paris school goes on to make some possibly quite unhelpful and overly abstract assertions about the nature of security that “Security studies are a form of imposture (deception)” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 10). For the Paris school, the academic field of “security studies” is an illusion, imposed by academics to maintain their position as elites (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 10). PARIS researchers thus consider that “security as a concept has no essence” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). These two ideas miss the point. Security does clearly have an essence in each context in which it is deployed and situated and to pretend it does not is to obfuscate responsibility to identify the empirics and concepts that in a particular context define on what terms the security game is played. Even in a diffuse arena such as social media, where security can take the form of a joke or a meme (Downing, 2020), it still does have a meaning. The “Paris school”, in refusing to be called such and to write in an obtuse and opaque manor risks falling into a dangerous paradox of championing the importance of writing for the oppressed and marginalised in security but in such a way that they are unlikely, as many graduate students of security studies often find, to be able to decipher exactly what they are saying. This is a danger with social theory more generally, but is especially tragic when such social theory claims an emancipatory orientation. Additionally, the Paris school does clearly take positions of a number of important issues within the security field that are extremely helpful in understanding contemporary security concerns. It is with these perhaps more tangible aspects of the theoretical tradition that some important tools can be brought to bear on the field of considering CSS and social media. The Paris school makes an important observation about the emergence of critical approaches at the end of the Cold War by arguing that in the Cold and post-Cold War era, security theory as a field where security agencies and actors merely “reacted” to security threats in the international system as if they were not involved, materially and discursively, in their creation (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). CSS seeks rather to return agency to security professionals and entities as key parts of the process of the creation of security threats (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Out of this discussion of larger agencies comes the notion of the “securocrats” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) who work specifically within security bureaucracies. This is important because it gives a broader notion of who the security actors are that have a role in threat construction. The Paris school does a good job of further expanding this

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by considering this process through a transactional notion of security— conversations between multiple professional and cultural worlds (Didier Bigo, 2011). A further important, and pertinent, observation about the Paris school is that it highlights how security is something that is increasingly part of everyday life and continually infiltrates every more areas of everyday life (Basaran et al., 2016). Within this, understanding security requires an emphasis to be placed on the lived experience of those effected by practices of security (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). With this for our understandings of social media and critical security studies sits an important point that different meanings of security exist in a variety of relations to different forms of technologies (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Thus while the Paris school highlights the important role of institutions and the “securocrats”, it also correctly seeks to de-centralise the security discussion away from elites to those previously marginal to security discussions (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Doing this is facilitated in part by the importance placed by the Paris school of the dominant power relations existing in global and local contexts that shape the defining of security and insecurity (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). While we have hinted at some key critiques of the Paris school in its rejection of the very notion of security while going on to simultaneously extensively use the term, there are other more profound critiques of the Paris school that we need to consider if we are to go on and possibly consider it as an important part of the critical canon that can be applied to social media. We have already mentioned the importance of power relations in the Paris school, and that it sees these as central in considering how we can understand security in the contemporary world. This question of power relations is clearly borrowed from the critical canon of philosophy and in the case of the Paris school of security specifically from the work of the philosopher Foucault. However, this is also a problem in that scholars have highlighted the issue that the Paris school relies too heavily on the problematic, post-modern, partisan and personal writings of the philosopher Foucault (Floyd, 2006). This can be seen to give the Paris school an outlook which is “Deliberately inflated, in part conspiratorial and on occasion far from reality” (Floyd, 2006, p. 2). Thus, it has been argued that the Paris school offers nothing new to the critical security studies field other than the use of said field for the propagation of Foucault’s cause and worldview. Foucault’s work on bio-politics, and the way that the governing of the sustainment of life through the intrenched

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management of populations offers important insights into the relationship between security and technology. This is because the regulation of the body, and by extension human populations, only becomes feasible and possible because of the technologies that emerged in the nineteenth century that enable states to measure, study and discipline and even kill a population (Means, 2021). However, a key critique is based upon Foucault as a person and how his lifestyle and work are inseparable (Floyd, 2006). Foucault’s lifestyle is well-established as highly deviant and questionable, seeing all rules to be a form of bourgeois oppression, and engaged widely in paedophilia in Tunisia on the pretext that underage boys had a right to pleasure (Cahill, 2000; Sorman, 2020). However, it is argued that this informs both his particular take on reality, going as far to distort and mis-represent reality (Floyd, 2006). As such, it is problematic that the Paris school not only takes on his work unquestionably, but also that it is irresponsible in not acknowledging the issues with his worldview and research methods more broadly (Floyd, 2006). Thus, when we refer to contributions that are possible because of the Paris school of securitisation in this book, it is important to do so not in an unquestioning and uncritical way. It is important thus, to be critical of the “critical”.

2.4

From the General to the Specific: More Particular Developments in Critical Security Studies

This rather arbitrary and perhaps vulgar transition is likely to raise some eyebrows as the proponents of the above schools of critical security studies can point to the fact that while the Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris schools are “macro” in their approach, they can be and are often applied to micro-level case studies and empirical examples. However, none of the above theories were developed to address very specific concerns in security as the two theories that will be discussed in this chapter emerged to tackle. Vernacular security studies emerged to plug a significant gap in the field left by the overly elite conceptions of the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) and the vague calls for the inclusion for voices from below in security studies made by the Paris school (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) nor the calls for emancipation venerated by the Welsh school (Wyn Jones, 1995). Here, a vernacular security studies agenda

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emerges to operationalise real-world voices “from below” of non-elites (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) and thus given the non-elite composition of much of social media a discussion of this is vital. Additionally, critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007) emerged specifically in the context of the war on terror to apply a constructivist approach to the emergent security challenges presented by the war on terror. 2.4.1

Voices from Below: Vernacular Security Studies

If we cast our mind back to earlier in this chapter, an important observation about the genesis of critical security studies in the form of the Copenhagen school was that elites speak security, laypeople listen (inter alia Buzan et al., 1997; Huysmans, 1998). However, while there have been significant critiques of the conceptions of elites and audiences within the Copenhagen school, another key aspect that they desperately undertheorised is that non-elites also speak and construct security. While they offer an inroad here “nor is anyone excluded from attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 31), it does not go nearly far enough. This is where the ongoing “vernacular” turn in security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016) that seeks to offer a greater voice to non-state actors in how they articulate security concerns in idioms of the everyday that interweave with other forms of social identification and local concerns. The “vernacular” turn in security (Jarvis & Lister, 2012; VaughanWilliams & Stevens, 2016) conceptualises the ways in which security is constructed in everyday terms. Security has become an increasingly important part of the daily social practices through developments such as a data collection and CCTV operation (Huysmans, 2011) which immerse the individual in near constant engagement with security broadly defined. The idea of the “speech act” so central to the Copenhagen School requires re-balancing away from the linguistic turns focus on “speech” towards every day “acts” that embed security in the daily (Huysmans, 2011). The focus here on emergent technologies dovetails with this paper’s concern with the opportunities presented by social media that go the other way in allowing individuals to challenge and subvert their emersion in security. Thus, technology is not simply something which surveys and monitors the individual, but also democratises the ability to

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subvert, re-make and challenge dominant narratives and constructions of security. Coming without set conceptions of what security is or indeed should be, provides vernacular security studies with a theoretical “emptiness” that allows for truly inductive insights into public experiences, understandings and anxieties about security (Jarvis, 2019). Security is practised in different ways in different places, requiring context-specific understanding of idioms of uncertainty and fear about global, national and/or local security concerns (Bubandt, 2005). Thus vernacular security prioritises the stories of those marginalised in account of global politics and seeks to understand how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017). Currently under-examined within this burgeoning literature are how new forms of media technologies allow security speak to take place through multimodal, multi-media outputs. 2.4.2

Making Sense of the Post-9/11 World: Critical Terrorism Studies

An example of a strand of critical security studies which emerges to fill a very specific gap in the security studies literature can be seen in critical terrorism studies. This is because it emerges out of a very specific context (post-9/11 and the war on terror) and because it applies a constructivist orientation the problematic discussion of terrorism. Critical terrorism shares its emergent mechanism with many of the critical takes on security already discussed in this chapter. Critical terrorism studies emerged out of a well thought out critique of the empirical, conceptual and ontological weaknesses of conventional terrorism studies (inter alia Gunning, 2007; Jackson, 2007; Jackson et al., 2007; Jarvis, 2009). This critique of dominant understandings of security, especially when applied to questions of terrorism, are in fact well thought out and offer some important points of discussion. A key aspect of the weakness in “classical” security studies applied to terrorism has been identified as significant methodological and analytical weaknesses, poor research methods, over-reliance on secondary information and lack of primary research (Jackson, 2007, p. 1). This is significant and the rationale goes that much of this would not be tolerated in scholarship applied to other security problems situated in discussions of the global North and not the global South. Solving this issue, however, is not as straightforward as it

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may seem, given the security issues involved with accessing first-hand “terrorists” of any particular persuasion, often further complicated by their frequent deaths while conducting or planning acts of violence. Additionally, there are some of the key conceptual and indeed often resulting empirical issues that come out of this methodological weakness. One key issue being that while terrorism has entered the vernacular and taken on a “common sense” definition, classical scholarship on terrorism failed to develop a coherent and rigorous definition of terrorism (Jackson, 2007, p. 1). Those that did emerge, it is argued, were descriptive and had a condemnatory character (Jackson, 2007, p. 1)—i.e. that the “terrorist” was deviant, evil and outside of the realism of “normal” combat. Expertise is also problematised in critical terrorism studies. In particular, Burnett and Whyte (2005) present an important summary of many of the key arguments which evolve from this agenda and highlight key concerns around issues of terror ‘experts’ who know little about the contexts in which they operate, have never met nor researched terrorists and are closely involved with state security approaches to terror from a “problem solving” perspective (Burnett & Whyte, 2005). For example, it was seen that a range of experts who: do not—and more probably cannot—actually know very much about al Qaeda does not prevent a range of experts pontificating and presenting highly dubious conjecture as ‘truth’. (Burnett & Whyte, 2005, p. 1)

It is important to situate the way that terrorism emerged onto the security scene post-9/11 in ways it had not done so before because neither did the use of the term terrorism, nor the committal of “terrorist” acts begin that fateful day in the USA. Rather, the post-9/11 discussion of terrorism is marked conceptually by the emergence of an idea of a “new terrorism” worse than anything seen before which accelerated post-9/11 but had roots in the closing decades of the twentieth century (Burnett & Whyte, 2005, p. 2). Thus enters the lexicon the idea of “megaterrorism” and the over-estimation of the threats constituted from chemical, nuclear and biological weapons that terrorists were alleged to be attempting to procure to make “dirty bombs” (Burnett & Whyte, 2005, p. 3). This is important because it is this context and these conceptions that empowered, enabled and emboldened the “war on terror” to undertake more than a decade of global conflict, claiming hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.

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Critical terrorism seeks to fight back against such issues by adopting an overtly social constructivist stance vis-à-vis terror events (Gunning, 2007; Jackson, 2007; Jarvis, 2009). An important nuance of this approach is not to negate the objective, empirically irrefutable violence involved in terror events—as not to obfuscate the deaths, suffering and horror of mass killings. However, it is vital to understand that while the violence of these events is objective, how that violence is labelled, discussed and conceptualised is not, but is subjective and dynamic. Knowledge creation about terror events is thus deeply embroiled in political and ideological debates, competitions and concerns (Burnett & Whyte, 2005). Indeed, Jackson’s (Jackson, 2007) observations are important in that the emergence of the widespread term “Islamic terrorism” owes much to the assumptions that underpinned the orientalist scholarship on Islam and the Middle East that blossomed from the nineteenth century onwards. Thus the creation of good scholarship on terror is not a simple and straightforward task owing to a number of problems such as a lack of information sharing between security services and scholars (Sagemen, 2014) and the fact that the deaths of many terrorists in their own acts of violence mean there are few post-facto testimonies. Many terrorists die in the conduct of violence, and thus are not available for post-facto interviews about their motivations, ideological rationale or connection to transnational networks. However, clearly this book does not set out to adopt nor operationalise the need to talk to terrorists first hand. Rather, there are other developments and observations that stem from the constructivist orientation of critical terrorism studies that are relevant to social media studies. One thread of critical terrorism studies that emerges out of both applying constructivism and abandoning the “problem solving” orientation of classical terrorism studies in creating good scholarship on the range of ways in which terrorism not only has diffused more and more into our everyday lives, but also is constructed in a growing number of areas such as popular culture (Holland, 2011). Thus, when Huysmans speaks about little security nothings and the emergence of CCTV as mainstream in Western societies (Huysmans, 2011), he is situating security in this everyday context in a similar vein to many of the anti-terror messages that many are exposed to on metro systems globally—calls to report anything suspicious—that became more common in the age of the war on terror. Additionally, in part due to this large diffusion, constructions of terrorism are not only found in policy documents about prevent

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or other anti-terrorism strategies, but have also emerged into popular culture (Holland, 2011). This is important because social media offers a ripe ground for investigating the broader discussions and constructions around terrorism. Social media is not only a relevant subject for understanding ISIS propaganda (Awan, 2017) and the “electronic jihad” (Rudner, 2017) but also for the broader, paradoxical and unexpected ways that terrorism is constructed on social media (Downing, 2020; Downing & Dron, 2020; Downing et al., 2022).

2.5 Security and Technology: Social Media and CyberSecurity Debates New media technologies are, quite obviously, facets of a broader intrusion and integration of technologies into social, human and political processes. As a discussion of them in the realm of security studies, especially that from a critical perspective needs to take into account the ways in which technologies are theorised and studied in the literature. Critical theories of technology are in fact nothing new (Leckie & Buschman, 2008) and have boomed in the past three decades as information technologies have increasingly penetrated everyday life. Indeed, to reach even further back into history, a key feature of the alienation Marx saw as so central and specific to the capitalist system of production comes from man’s (and in this period, it really was predominantly men who worked in manufacturing, not to neglect the alienation experienced by woman and children) relationship to manufacturing technologies such as machines (Wendling, 2009). An example of this is how Marx considered that “Steam technology changes the way in which human embodiment is constructed, experienced and portrayed” (Wendling, 2009, p. 3). This is an extremely important political observation with far longer roots in that significant events in human political, social and economic history are products of the invention, application, subversion and manipulation of technological innovation. The findings of natural science and technological innovations always take roles in conflict and security since antiquity (Reuter et al., 2019). This is quite obviously somewhat abstracted from discussions of Twitter and indeed fills many volumes of quality scholarship and social commentary. Thus here, the main focus has to be specifically on information technologies, and where possible their relationship to the even narrower realms of security.

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The field of information technology and warfare has become a cluster of large, interrelated fields concerned with the mind boggling array of means by which information technology can relate to security including cybercrime (Alexandrou, 2021), cybersecurity (Foltz et al., 2020) and the ways in which information technologies can be applied to the battlefield (Reuter, 2019). Some of this, such as hacking and the resulting information leaks to provide the genesis for the broader discursive constructions of security on social media analysed in this book, such as the #MacronLeaks data breach as an attempt at election meddling. However, this also demonstrates an important and required division here in that the processes and technical details of the hacking are not the primary focus of this book, but rather the resulting discursive ripples that emerge and how the dynamics of these on social media can, and do, serve to disrupt critical understandings of how the security environment is configured. So while there may be rich insights, the more technical discussions of network breeches, the way that policy elites construct threats in technical policy or indeed possibly the way that IT engineers are involved in some way in defining referent objects when pitching particular solutions to uninformed consumers, this is beyond both the technical and research possibilities of the author. Indeed, a possible fascinating avenue for future research could be within some of these key issues because in the course of the research for this book, several conversations with law enforcement agencies across Europe revealed the shockingly unprepared state of a range of businesses and organizations even to simple and well-established cybersecurity threats. For example, someone involved in cybersecurity law enforcement relayed how, as larger international companies have drastically improved their cybersecurity capabilities, as have many government departments, hackers have increasingly turned to targeting less prepared, less informed and less resourced small and medium enterprises (SMEs) using quite basic ransomware attacks. Thus, it would be fascinating to gain insights into some of these dynamics. However, we digress, and there already exists literatures much more closely related to the focus here in critical security studies and social media. A key element of social media and security that has received specific attention is in the broader questions of its potential for aiding in protest and democracy. This has resulted in a “tiresome binary debate between cyber-optimists and cyber-skeptics” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 2). This question of whether social media can foster democracy and aid antiauthoritarian protest movements has received attention in a number of

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contexts (Persily & Tucker, 2020; Wolfsfeld et al., 2013). However the picture remains complex. Thus the field exists where discussion of social media are: Often marred in narratives of modernization and progress, the interplay between technologies and social and political change is rarely properly scrutinized in public debate. Instead we find ourselves with rather simplistic and one-sided explanations for how new developments in technologies have transformed society, caused major events. (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 1)

It is within this debate that simplistic explanations of major global shocks emerge, explained as due to social media, such as the election of Donald Trump being facilitated by online jokes and memes (Nussbaum, 2017), paying little attention to the broader “hard” questions including growing material inequality in the USA in the preceding 30 years. Additionally, it was widely reported that social media had been the key determining factor in the Arab spring, echoing the narrative that a “Dominant narrative has emerged that celebrates the advent of social media platforms as simple tools to be used for liberating purposes by a host of progressive social and political actors” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 1). This “does little to illuminate the complexity and contradictions of contemporary forms of protest in the age of social media” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 1). This can be seen in studies of the Arab spring where the social media activity followed the events on the ground and thus cannot be clearly identified as dictating or “causing” events on the street (Wolfsfeld et al., 2013). Thus there is a complex relationship where some examples exist of protest movements benefiting from social media, but at the same time there are numerous “controlling forces” and this relationship creates “an evermore contradictory and paradoxical protest terrain” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 2). Thus comes to the fore the far broader debate between the material and the critical/discursive perspectives on security more broadly where “movements need more than just faster and more widespread forms of communication in order to emerge and be sustained” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 3). Thus, as we have hinted at above, giving a voice to the voiceless is a rather thin conception of emancipation if there is little material or structural change. Protest movements can benefit from social media, but they also need a larger material presence. It is also vitally important to consider that social media companies

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are “commercial entities, first and foremost, a point woefully neglected in many discussions” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 4). This observation opens up the broader discussion of a critical take on social media offered by Marxist analysis of social media. The idea that social media is somehow stuck between “emancipation and commodification” (Allmer, 2015) has significant purchase on the reality of the contradictions of new media technologies. Numerous issues of material exploitations are presented by social media (Allmer, 2015). This begins with the perhaps more obvious questions of the extraction of value by social media companies as profit-seeking entities, but also to the obscure practices of exploitation such as the mining of trace minerals required in IT infrastructure (Allmer, 2015). an asymmetrical economic power relations characterises social networks, because companies own the platform, the data of their users, and the profits, and they decide the terms of use and privacy policies, while the users do not share ownership rights, do not control corporate social media platforms, have no right to decide on terms of use and privacy policies, and do not benefit from the profit being created out of user data produced for free. (Allmer, 2015, p. 5)

Thus a nuanced and balanced approach is required. Additionally important when considering this emancipation/commodification dichotomy of social media is in the relationship of social media to freedom of speech as they can be seen as continuations of long-term processes of surveillance technologies (Allmer, 2015, p. 10). Also at the same time as rise of new social media into the place of “old media” was facilitated by new media giving the opportunity to highlight the broader issues of society that “old media” has become unable to do (Leistert, 2015, p. 36), governments mine social media data as very easy ways to understand and undermine protests (Leistert, 2015, p. 36). This question of freedom and censorship is complex as social media transforms control from “the question of legality to a question of benevolence” (Leistert, 2015, p. 36). Within this, control moves from being about legal rules established by the state to the ever-changing codes of conduct, terms of service and restraints put in place by unelected social media companies (Leistert, 2015). Agree with a particular movement or not, the question of de-platforming is a significant one, such as the removal of anti-vaccine mandate pages on Facebook linked to the Canadian trucker movement

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(Rhett Miller, 2022). Thus companies like Facebook and Twitter take on important censorship roles and get to define, as never before, what can be said and what cannot be said (Leistert, 2015). Examples of this question of censorship and de-platforming can be found in the well-developed scholarship on “hard” aspects of the internet as a place where extremism or dissent can spread. It has been long established that social media plays some very important roles in the spread of extremism. It provides places for “group-building, fund raising, and recruitment” (Gaikwad et al., 2021, p. 48364). However, the tools for the detection of extremism on social media remain under significant critique for being “limited by specific ideology, subjective validation methods, and binary or tertiary classification” (Gaikwad et al., 2021, p. 48364). It was also noted that the current research on the topic was biased towards focusing on ISIS and ISIS propaganda (Gaikwad et al., 2021, p. 48364). This is an important observation as clearly jihadism is an important online security concern, but far from the only one in the online sphere, given the prevalence of right wing and white nationalist activity on social media groups (Amarasingam et al., 2021; Conway et al., 2019). This said, the research on Islamic extremism and jihadism online can offer some important insights into the social media and security landscape that are rich for insights into critical understandings of security. The coverage of the “electronic-jihad” (Aly et al., 2016; Juris, 2012; Malmgren, 2017; Tufekci, 2012) also presents valuable insights through which to expand on the cultural, social and local means through which terrorism and security are discussed and constructed. However, caution is required in attaching too much importance to the online sphere when it comes to explaining radicalisation—it does not exist separately, nor in a higher order of importance in the process than peer pressure and face-to-face communication (Séraphin et al., 2017). In particular, the rise of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) put the questions about the role of social media as a catalyst of extremism at the front and centre of the public debate, as well as generating a range of scholarship. A key question here being how ISIS fought a cyber war through the manipulation of text, images and videos an extremely slick and processional finish (Awan, 2017). This is important as this cultivated a “glamorized and ‘cool’ image” where “ISIS fighters are beginning to act as the new rock stars of global cyber jihad” (Awan, 2017, p. 138). Here, the online sphere acts as “the virtual playground for extremist views to be reinforced and act as an echo chamber” (Awan, 2017, p. 138).

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The group was extremely social media savvy and was active across a range of social media platforms—including at the start the mainstream sites of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube (Awan, 2017). However, paradoxically de-platforming would drive the groups’ activities on social media more underground and present law enforcement with significant challenges in following and monitoring their lines of communication. ISIS created a social media architecture that aimed to enable its members to avoid security crackdowns on communications exchanged and content posted by the group (Clarke & Serena, 2017). Additionally, it was reported that after their de-platforming from the “mainstream”, they moved to telegram, and then to an even lesser known app “TamTam” (Prothero, 2019). Thus, we can learn something important from this small example that presents significant challenges to the researcher. Security actors from above, in the “intermediate” sphere of the non-state actor, and “from below” of people not directly involved with security per se but who comment on it and are subjected to security practices do not stick to one platform. Thus, it is important to consider this as many studies have been single platform in focus and given the data gathering issues presented by many platforms, it may also be extremely difficult if impossible to gather data from some of the most important social media platforms. For example, messaging apps like WhatsApp undoubtedly host significant amounts of security-related discussions between individuals, whether through text or through graphical memes, but these are inaccessible to the researcher. Additionally, as individuals do not stick to a single platform in their discussions of security, it is also safe to say that discourse around any specific issue also does not stay limited to one platform. For example, the meme-ification of a terror threat made by ISIS to Marseille had a response that started on YouTube, was then given coverage in the “old” news media, which created a Twitter ripple (Downing, 2020). This is not to say that single platform studies are fruitless, just that it is important to consider the limits that scale and access impose on researchers. However, it is also important to consider that social media is not just important in a security context for subversives and non-state actors. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine has given insights into the ways in which social media has, and indeed will, come to play an important role in state-tostate conflict as part of the broader roles that technology play on the battlefield. If we go back to an earlier observation that technology has

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been used on the battlefield since antiquity (Reuter et al., 2019), this should come as no surprise. As such, within the context of the Ukraine conflict, it is one among many technologies that are finding deployment in a state-to-state conflict. These include, but are not limited to, drones, starlink satellite internet and new app-based targeting systems that work on the geo-localisation technology similar to the ride hailing app uber (Parker, 2022). Two things need to be mentioned here. The first being that social media is clearly not the only, nor probably the most important, technology that decides battlefield outcomes in Ukraine. This is regardless of how this conflict may seem from the outside as our opinion may be easily skewed by our consumption of the conflict through social media platforms, possibly through compulsive “doomscrolling” (Dupont, 2022), in addition to the mainstream news. However, social media is important for this reason—i.e. it is how the conflict is constructed and consumed by both sides—leading to questions about whether this is “the first social media war” (Suciu, 2022). This comes with an assertion that the “ability to post updates, share videos could help ensure that the first casualty of this war isn’t the truth” (Suciu, 2022). From a more cynical perspective, this is unfortunately the kind of simplistic and unidirectional analysis often replete in coverage of social media and its possible effects on the social world which are undoubtedly far more multidirectional and complex than attempts at headline grabbing allow. This fits with observations that “the dominant narrative of social media during the ongoing war in Ukraine is often reduced to considerations of stopping the spread of dis/misinformation” (Bernot & Childs, 2022) but its role is far more complex and multifaceted. This includes the stunning acts of resistance made possible and popularised by social media in the conflict, such as president Zelensky making addresses from the presidential palace in Kiev to demonstrate that he had not left the country in the early stages on the invasion (Bernot & Childs, 2022). What is important here is the possibility that social media is giving rise to a “new type of ‘fog of war’” where the parallel developments of information saturation on social media, and the intertwining of information and disinformation on such platforms makes it difficult for both lay persons and even those with expertise in conflict more broadly or the specifics of the region more precisely, can find it difficult to know what is happening (Timberg & Harwell, 2022). Thus, it is not because more information is being beamed directly into social media platforms and our devises that it means we are better informed about a conflict.

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The Ukraine conflict has also been marked by attempts at using social media platforms in quite bizarre ways that have allowed new terms directly connected to social media platforms to enter the popular lexicon on conflict. The persistent and at times bizarre social media output of the Chechen fighters deployed into the Ukraine conflict has led to the emergence of a term the “TikTok battalion” because of a perception that they are more concerned with producing social media content on the platform than being involved in any useful way in the actual fighting of the conflict (Kilner, 2022). The social media output of the Chechens was also manipulated by social media users seeking to discredit them. A screenshot of the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov praying outside a Russian petrol station was circulated as a claim that he was falsely claiming the photo was proof of him being in Mariupol (Ershad, 2022). However, not only was the photo not posted by Kadyrov, as it was a screenshot of a video posted previously, the original content never claimed he was in Mariupol (Ershad, 2022). However, this did not stop established media outlets picking up the story and repeating the false, and indeed discrediting, narratives about Kadyroz and the Chechens more generally that were not even created by the security elite himself, but rather by a social media user claiming he had. This demonstrates the complexity of the social media environment both in the context in the Ukraine conflict and in its relationship to security more generally that renders its relationship with critical security theory extremely complex and beyond the remit in which critical security studies emerged. For example, the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) in the closing years of the twentieth century could not have considered that established news outlets would repeat a lie about an elite security discourse claiming to be produced by the elite actor but was not, involving the use of handheld devices and microblogging platforms.

2.6 Conclusions on Critical Security Studies, Technology and Social Media This chapter sets out with an ambitious goal—to situate a discussion of social media and critical security studies in its broader conceptual and theoretical context. This is a big ask but has yielded some important starting points for the coming discussions that are more empirically focused and seek to use specific examples to make points which challenge, compliment and subvert some of the key ideas of critical security studies more broadly. Indeed, the war in Ukraine has begun to demonstrate

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that even “classical” and conventional discussions of security increasingly need to take into account the ever-growing importance of a range of technologies, but more specifically our concern here, social media, in understanding twenty-first-century conflict. For example, the use of geolocation technology in a mobile phone app as an “uber for artillery” (Parker, 2022) is a fascinating development, even if we still need to withhold judgement as to whether the Ukraine conflict is indeed the first “social media war” (Suciu, 2022). Indeed, it has been posited for some time that social media will play a key role in conflict and specifically that the “future of war will be liked” (Singer & Booking, 2018). Ukraine is not the first, however, as Russian troops and US servicemen have made significant use of social media in other conflicts, as have non-state combatants such as ISIS and al-Qaeda (Awan, 2017; Rudner, 2017). The critical turn in security studies has a lot of gain from an increased focus on social media and vice versa. While much critiqued, the deeply hierarchical Copenhagen school’s notion of elite actors being those that can, and do, securitise situations (Buzan & Wæver, 1997) needs significantly revisiting if we are to take account of both the greater range of voices taking part in security debates on social media, and indeed how, if and when security elites use social media to deploy this kind of security speak. The Welsh school, with its focus on emancipation (Wyn Jones, 1999), did not consider the possibilities for both progress and impediment made possible for “discursive emancipation” by social media platforms. The Paris school, with its formulation of the term “securocrats” who develop and promote ideas about security from the security of their bureaucracies also had not considered the role that technological bureaucracies in companies like Twitter or Facebook could take in the security realm. Indeed, it remains unclear to what extent, and in what ways the vernacular security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) agenda can and will account for the ever multiplying range of security speak “from below” that their exciting theoretical work entails. The same can be said for the daunting possibilities that critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007) opens up for understanding the constructions of terrorism on social media. What is also important is to remember that the emergence of social media as a key technology of security across a range of domains in the twenty-first century first into much broader historical trends. The emergence of the latest technology onto the battlefield is a trend as old as humanity itself—stretching back at least until antiquity (Reuter, 2019).

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However, social media is only one small area where information technologies have become so central to questions of security (Reuter, 2019; Foltz et al., 2020). The growth of hacking and cybercrime (Alexandrou, 2021) are also important areas that have received, and no doubt deserve to receive, only ever more and more attention from a range of security scholars because of their enormous range of applications. Thus, thinking about technology and security needs to, and does, go beyond pepe the frog memes and ISIS propaganda on telegram (Prothero, 2019; Smith, 2016). These are only a few of the many insights that have been gained in this chapter’s discussion, all facilitated by the collective call within critical security studies for the expansion and broadening of the field of security studies, an endeavour while fraught and incomplete, is one that this book owes a significant debt to.

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Clarke, C. P., & Serena, C. C. (2017, May 30). What happens after ISIS goes underground. https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/05/what-hap pens-after-isis-goes-underground.html Conway, M., Scrivens, R., & Macnair, L. (2019). Right-wing extremists’ persistent online presence: History and contemporary trends. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep19623 Croft, S., & Vaughan-Williams, N. (2017). Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of international relations: Towards a vernacular turn. Cooperation and Conflict, 52(1), 12–30. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0010836716653159 Dencik, L., & Leistert, O. (2015). Critical perspectives on social media and protest: Between control and emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield. Downing, J. (2020). Memeing and speaking vernacular security on social media: YouTube and Twitter resistance to an ISIS Islamist terror threat to Marseille, France. Journal of Global Security Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ ogz081 Downing, J., & Dron, R. (2020, November). Theorising the ‘security influencer’: Speaking security, terror and Muslims on social media during the Manchester bombings. New Media & Society, 1461444820971786. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1461444820971786 Downing, J., Gerwens, S., & Dron, R. (2022). Tweeting terrorism: Vernacular conceptions of Muslims and terror in the wake of the Manchester bombing on Twitter. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 239–266. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/17539153.2021.2013450 Dupont, M. (2022). ‘Doomscrolling,’ or the never-ending emotional roller coaster of social media. Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/art icle/2022/04/21/doomscrolling-or-the-never-ending-emotional-roller-coa ster-of-social-media_5981126_13.html Elder-Vass, D. (2013). The reality of social construction (Reprint). Cambridge University Press. Ershad, A. (2022). Was this photo of Chechen Leader Kadyrov praying in a petrol station taken in Ukraine? The Observers - France 24. https://observ ers.france24.com/en/europe/20220401-was-this-photo-of-chechen-leaderkadyrov-praying-in-a-petrol-station-taken-in-ukraine Floyd, R. (2006). When Foucault met security studies: A critique of the ‘Paris school’ of security studies. In Paper. University of Cork, Ireland. Floyd, R. (2007). Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security: Bringing together the Copenhagen and the Welsh schools of security studies. Review of International Studies, 33(2), 327–350. Foltz, K. E., Simpson, W. R., and Institute for Defense Analyses. (2020). Enterprise level security 2: Advanced techniques for information technology in an uncertain world. CRC Press.

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CHAPTER 3

Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies

3.1 Introducing Digital Methods, Critical Security Studies and Social Media International relations, as social sciences go, has been quite a conservative discipline in terms of opening itself up to new themes of analysis. While sociology experienced a cultural turn in the latter half of the twentieth century, international relations seem much less willing to open up disciplinary, conceptual and empirical boundaries than its more micro-scale cousin. This is important methodologically because there is still significant debate about what “counts” as international relations methods and practice. Here, “Both method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59). As such, while the previous chapter sought to set up and problematise the issues around the conceptual and theoretical challenges of patching social media to the specifics of critical security studies and the more general field of international relations, this chapter seeks to go on a similar journey in terms of the methodological questions posed by this evolving relationship. This is, however, not simply a matter for methods as a more abstract, yet important, debate about issues such as the relationship between the material and the discursive (Aradau, Coward, et al., 2015). Rather, this is also very much about a practical, nuts and bolts question of data and access. Put bluntly, with the best methodological, theoretical and normative will in the world, if you cannot get hold of the data the game is over.

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This has ramifications for this field of study over and above many others in politics/IR as there are a lot of confusion and data collection problems. Across many platforms, a big example being Twitter, data is a commercial entity and thus social media companies can be loath to part with complete data sets at the pittance many researchers have to spend. Networks, such as those on applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Snapchat can be/are closed and six- and seven-figure research grants will be of no help. These few examples demonstrate the plurality of issues presented by attempting to make sense of social media through the diverse lenses of critical security studies that requires going beyond setting up methods as either self-evident, an after-thought or just a common-sense way of demonstrating scientific rigour. To bring some order to this chaos, this chapter proceeds as follows. Firstly, it is important to conceptualise the current state of play within the fields of methods in critical security studies, as recent decades have necessitated significant interest in this field, with some good and exhaustive tomes emerging to structure the field (Inter alia: Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015; Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This demonstrates both that solid foundations have been laid in considering the vital question of exactly what critical in critical security studies actually means from a methods perspective (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This is important because this sets the scene for a larger discussion, and theme within this book, about the diversity of social media platforms and the need to nuance what constitutes “social media” in any given context that we are analysing. Different methodological approaches are required by different platforms which is an observation that seeks to nuance current understandings of a singular “social media” that has implications for security studies and rather consider the pluralities and continuing multiplications of technologies. This aims to complicate these understandings and discuss the plurality and diversity of platforms and begin to unpack their various implications for critical security studies. Secondly, it is important to think more specifically about data issues, given the concerns raised above. This touches on some other important questions apart from the most obvious question of obtaining data and data access. This requires considering, and beginning to understand why some platforms are privileged over others in academic research. Twitter has been the subject of the largest number of studies, yet does not count for the largest number of users globally. This is because of the relative availability of Twitter data through the companies free to access, yet incomplete, API. Thus, this has skewed the field towards studies

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that reflect only one small, non-representative platform. Additionally, this requires considering questions of representation—i.e. when we sample a particular social media data set, what demographics are we sampling? It is worth observing that Twitter users in the USA were more likely to represent a younger demographic more likely to display liberal values verses the general population as a whole (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019). Facebook, for example, while the largest network by global penetration, moved to close access to its data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and thus leaves researchers with few avenues to systematically and robustly gather and analyse data sets. Understanding cost implications, full social media data sets are expensive. There are many tools available to those in business and marketing that would be extremely useful in academic research, yet the cost implications are enormous and thus hinder the possibilities of academic users to obtain such data. Indeed, it is at the intersection of the tools that business and marketing scholars have used and the social sciences that a lot of original research opportunities could, and indeed do, emerge. The third section of this chapter seeks to highlight some of the ethical issues with conducting social media research. This is a central concern of critical security studies research using social media because of the specific ethical questions raised by the issues around ethics in social media studies. Social media is an ethical mine field in terms of research as while scholars are dealing with human participants, their thoughts, feelings and opinions, they are doing so “at a distance” which has removed many of the usual academic checks on ethical research. It is important also to consider how the evolution of some methods from the “real” to the “online” social world can have unforeseen, and difficult to settle ethical implications. Fourthly, the chapter moves on to consider some key approaches to the study of social media for security. This would seek to outline and discuss the implications for applying a range of approaches including netnography, visual analysis, discourse analysis, thematic analysis. This will attempt to discuss the means by which such approaches can be operationalised for the social media context and the particular aspects of critical security studies this enables the scholar to access and use. This section will also discuss, and consider, novel international relations approaches to understanding technology and politics, such as discussions around how using technology can be seen as a methodology.

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3.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Methods There are some methodological issues with approaching the question of the intersection of social media and critical security studies that go broader and deeper than a specific question such as how Twitter does or does not challenge the Copenhagen school. This is because “Both method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59). This observation is at the crux of the broader process of scientific enquiry because disciplines only expand and progress, and new disciplines emerge, when somehow the definition of what actually counts as such is expanded. There is no easy way for this disruption to consider if it is either/both topdown and bottom-up. In the contemporary academic context, we have more courses, journals and methods of dissemination than ever—in no small part due to the digital revolution. However, this landscape remains replete with sometimes highly sectarian and sometimes completely arbitrary gate-keeping systems that make decisions all the time regardless of the excellence of the ideas or scholarship presented that is either rejected for funding or from a journal. This is a more general observation that sets up the need for the broader conceptual and methodological considerations that remain unsettled and problematic in both critical security studies and the broader discipline of international relations that it sits within. It is important to consider that critical security studies has at times been guilty of placing greater emphasis on being critical than on being methodologically rigorous (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This is not to say that it has to rely on big quantitative sets to be “rigorous”. Rather, it is important to recognise that a lot of critical security studies scholarship relies on case study analysis that is often poorly rooted in a specific methodological approach where more emphasis is placed onto the conceptual underpinnings and contributions than it is on any kind of methodological statement. It is within this conceptual concentration that “critical-ness” is established—i.e. a scholar giving a critical theory-based analysis on threat production. This is in many ways true also of international relations more broadly, where reliance has been on deductive analysis of specific case studies or more general observations on states and the nature of the international system.

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A specific example here could be taken as the Copenhagen school’s (Buzan et al., 1997) emphasis on “speech act” and the importance of speaking security by elites to convince an “audience” that does very little work on discussing the audience. The dynamics of what constitutes an audience, whether there is one audience or numerous audiences, and indeed to what extent the audience believes or disbelieves security elites and the dynamics of this process over space, time and contexts. Clearly, there is a lot that is left wanting, broader questions that an entire discipline of media and communications studies emerged to get to grips with. This is not to write off this kind of scholarly approach, as it is a field that this book follows and owes a lot of debt to—but it is important to acknowledge that these questions remain contested and more complex than they may seem on the surface. While this book seeks to question some of these key assumptions—keeping with the example above how questions of elite—audience relationships can be seen in the light of new media developments, it acknowledges the limits in its approach and that many of the responses given here are as much about opening up further discussions as they are about providing answers. We need to pose the question—is this a methodological and empirical cop out? No—it is a reflection on the reality of knowledge production in an evolving and highly dynamic field. One strength of critical security studies has been its work to diversify the highly conservative and historically narrow field of international relations. For example, the Paris school of security studies made a conscious effort early on to emphasise the need for the tools, approaches and understandings of sociology to be included into the field (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This is part and parcel of why still significant debate and disagreement rages about exactly what critical in critical security studies actually means (Salter & Mutlu, 2013) because of the diverse nature of the subfield. It is also important to recognise the methodological plurality of critical security studies—for example ethnographic, practice, discursive, corporeal and material (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This has brought many different practices to the table, and has challenged the assumptions of security scholarship in its traditional form, and have analysed security in numerous transnational contexts (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015). For example, Hansen devoted significant space to developing discursive methods in the field of critical security studies by applying it to foreign policy analysis (Hansen, 2006). The discursive turn also received an impetus from the emergence in the early twenty-first century of the

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use of discursive methods in security to study foreign policy (Hansen, 2006). The diversification of the field begs several important questions for scholars—namely methodological questions because an ever-diversifying range of contexts, themes and indeed “data” sources requires significant methodological reflection (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015). It is important also to note a basic point—method and methodology are not considered the same in not only the social sciences but in a range of scholarly fields (King, 1994; McGregor & Murnane, 2010). They are also often used unproblematically and interchangeably with little reflection. Here methods are the nuts and bolts procedure of what is done (King, 1994; McGregor & Murnane, 2010) and “methodology” is the far broader theoretical and conceptual reflection on what is being done. Thus here methodology should be seen as the broader conceptual and philosophical underpinnings and background of the research approach (King, 1994; McGregor & Murnane, 2010). Examples of this can be a critical (McGregor & Murnane, 2010) or “critical feminist” (King, 1994) or “positivist” (McGregor & Murnane, 2010). However, we can also see this discussion can actually go further as the quest for method and methodological innovation and reflection keeps pushing forward. Critical security scholars have argued against seeing methods as this purely instrumental step connects a broader approach to the nuts and bolts of research. As such, we should not simply see methods as “a bridge between a theory and a technical instrument of analysis” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 3) but as a practice. This is an interesting observation that is highly pertinent to critical security studies and social media because of the examples that this observation draws upon. A critical approach to methods “displaces methods from a tool of representing reality to a securitizing practice” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 4). As such, one can see many of the professional security practices employed by states, such as “analysis, precaution, horizon scanning, mapping, visual representation” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 5). Thus many fields within the security sector, ripe for analysis from critical perspectives, are the analysis of the application of methods by those in the security sphere (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015). This has included a range of techniques such as mapping, or from other perspectives social network analysis (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). The “black box” often confronted by social media research scholars are often precisely those methods applied behind the scenes by social media platforms and organisations to sort and make sense of their own data. This highlights

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a significant issue with this assumption that the securitising practices and their methods can be easily incorporated into the scholar’s tool box. While this offers some key insights into security practices and methods more broadly, it does not take sufficient account of the many data access issues in security research. For example, it is likely difficult to gain access to the mapping or horizon scanning tools of an agency like the European border security agency FRONTEX. Applying this to social media and critical security, the highly centralised and commercially sensitive nature of algorithms used to shape the social media landscape, on top of the already arduous data access issues that are so frequently a key feature of social media research. Additionally, there is a question about deleted or de-platformed data. It is obvious that from a security studies perspective, some of the most interesting, if macabre, content is removed before researchers have the chance to access it. This likely ranges from ISIS videos, to neo-Nazi hate speech. From a security perspective, much of this behind-the-scenes work has significant implications for us as scholars in terms of how platforms deplatform extremist voices. This has at least two dimensions. One that can be seen from the outside, is the interesting migration from one platform to another on de-platforming (Rogers, 2020) that may or may not be totally effective (Berger & Morgan, 2015) even if it atrophies groups social media followers. However, how de-platforming decisions are made, the methods used, how these are informed by the debates had behind closed doors between governments, law enforcement agencies and tech companies remained difficult if impossible to get research insights from. This is neither a new challenge for security scholars, nor is it unique to social media and security studies as it is an issue raised in a range of domains, including intelligence studies (Fry & Hochstein, 1993). Methods as an experimental form of “bricolage” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 3), i.e. a sophisticated sounding French word that basically means “do it yourself”. This is highly relevant to the social media context as much of the ground remains unbroken and methods, especially when applied to social science questions are often experimental. Also, it is important to acknowledge that the large, impressive quant insights into social media data sets can be sometimes beyond the means of the individual or small group researcher without significant funding nor coding experience. However, this does not mean that social media research in the field of security should be left only to those extremely well resourced of with a qualification in python. Creative and experimental,

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interdisciplinary, conversations with willing and interested individuals with experience in digital marketing and data and computer scientists (this kind of work has been the geneses for several publications which would have been impossible for me to do alone and was only facilitated by the expertise of those more tech-savvy than myself, including Downing & Ahmed, 2019; Downing & Dron, 2020a, 2020b). Thus there is something to be said for methods should be an “experimental move of to and fro” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) within critical security studies that can be incorporated into the quest to better understand how these tools can be applied to social media. While this chapter will provide some examples about how this “experimental move of to and fro” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) between curious scholars can provide some interesting insights, these are in no way exhaustive nor are they a substitute for other researchers doing their own back and forth discussions. Within this, it is both “method” as the process of analysis, and methodology, in the form of the broader conceptual approaches that underpin this, that require significant time and intellectual investment when considering how social media and critical security studies can come together because often the approaches existing in the many disciplines required remain discreet and isolated from each other. For example, much of the social media literature is concerned with the broader commercial and social questions of issues such as influencer capital (Anger & Kittl, 2011; Bakshy et al., 2011; del Fresno García et al., 2016), this remains unexplored from a critical security studies perspective. As such, something as important as nuancing the contours of the social media landscape, where some democratisation of the ability to create discourse takes place, there remain significant inequalities between those whose discourses of security disappear into a vacuum, and those whose “go viral” (Downing & Dron, 2020a) and perhaps even cross over into mainstream media coverage (Downing, 2020). To paraphrase George Orwell in a social media context—while all users are created equal, some are more equal than others. This gets at two key assumptions about critical security studies that render it particularly ripe for an intersection with social media in that not only is the “problem of change that captures the critical sensibility of critical security studies” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) but also that “disruption, innovation and creative change takes place in experimentation” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015). This does not mean journal editors or reviewers in the security field, even those of

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the highly “critical” leaning, will agree, but so goes another key “to and fro” within the social sciences—between innovation and conservatism.

3.3 Digital Research Challenges: Data Access, Demographics and Ethics This chapter now turns to some more practice questions hinted at within the methods and methodology discussion above in terms of cost, access and the demographics of social media use. This begins with an age-old question within the social sciences that continues to be important within the social media and critical security studies field in terms of data and data approaches. The pitched battles that continue to rage around approaches in the social sciences, specifically between quantitative and qualitative remain not only important within the social sciences but have a very specific application to social media studies because in effect platforms such as Twitter with its possibility of generating enormous data sets seems to hint at the need for quant text mining approaches. While these battles have, at least in part, been driven by the metrics that rank universities and departments with publication metrics and impact factors, where the highest impact factor journals are largely based on the positivist approaches to understanding the social world borrowed from the natural sciences, there are larger practical concerns for social media scholars that render questions of huge data sets more complex than first seen. For example, the pro-quant rational centres on the need to “prove” relationships with recourse to statistical tests that rely on complex models and the 5% confidence level, this is not so easily translated in a meaningful way to social media data sets. This is because social media does not give simplistic numerical data outputs in the same way as the raw numbers that are often fed into linear regressions. A 250,000-tweet data set, for example, comes with a range of quant metrics but especially from a critical security perspective, it is the discourse itself that is of often primary, and if not the primary focus it still remains of significant importance. This presents scholars with significant problems as with what to do with these kinds of data sets that escape simplistic analysis. Luckily in line with the technological advances that have enabled social media to develop, significant progress has also been made with other forms of computational tools that can tame such expansive data sets. Machine learning, and increasingly AI, are entering into the scholarly lexicon as a means to aid researchers by automating at least some of the classification processes (Balaji et al.,

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2021). This has necessitated the use of coding languages such as R and Python that enable analysts to create their own tools to make sense of data sets that has spawned a significant literature (Bali et al., 2017; Chatterjee & Krystyanczuk, 2017) and a range of courses and summer schools dedicated to training scholars to become self-sufficient in these powerful tools. This does present some issues however for scholars because not everyone has the inclination, time or resources to learn a programming language from scratch. This represents a significant investment of time and energy for the researcher which can be problematic. Thankfully, there exists “off the shelf” solutions that integrate a range of machine learning technologies with easy-to-use user interfaces. However, an important aspect to consider here with such solutions is that the field is extremely dynamic with new platforms emerging, closing, and their functionalities changing and evolving constantly. Additionally, they come at a greater financial cost to researchers than “DIY” python or R alternatives. Platforms also may have, sometimes unadvertised, discount rates for scholars so it is always worth contacting them in advance to discuss possibilities. One example of an “off the shelf” machine learning solution with a classifier and user friendly interface that has found some popularity for Twitter analysis has been DiscoverText (Beyer, 2012). This enables scholars to build their own codes/frames/themes and train the classifier with a training set and then allow the classifier to run the classification of large data sets which is extremely helpful. An example of a specific application of this will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, but it is important to make two early caveats for the application of such approaches and indeed the entire idea that such an approach will solve the problems of all social media scholars. Firstly, these automatic approaches make mistakes and still are not able to capture discursive nuances that are vital to understandings of security. This is not limited to linguistic nuances either—increasingly even on text heavy platforms such as Twitter images, videos and emojis are integrated into the conversation. These are not only integrated into the platform, but are important ways in which nuances in meaning, framing and thus our understanding of security evolves and are shaped. To bring this to a concrete example, a large (n greater than 100,000) Twitter data set was purchased to examine a specific ISIS threat to the French city of Marseille. Unexpectedly, this data set was replete with security memes—where users sought to subvert, undermine and remake questions of security and jihadism, much of which took the form

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of user-generated graphical memes (Downing, 2020). Teasing out these key nuances, so vital for the analysis of such an event from a critical perspective, required far more manual coding and interpretation of the data than (i) first imagined and (ii) possible with labour saving machine learning technology. Therefore caution is advised when applying such digital methods as not to lose the very insights that we are seeking to gather. This tallies with a broader observation that methodological distinctiveness of the human sciences that require greater degrees of nuance to understanding the complexities and peculiarities of the human condition (Moon, 1975). Building on from this, it may seem paradoxical at first in such a digital, data filled arena as social media that qualitative approaches retain significant utility. Going even further, there is often little choice for the researcher than applying qualitative approaches because of the inability of machines to catch the nuances implicitly within elements of output, such as in the example of the graphical memes mentioned above. However, going even further in many cases, qualitative approaches are not simply “add ons” for when a quantitative approach falters but have to be the “go to” approach because of the characteristics of the data itself. YouTube is a hugely popular, influential, important and the largest video-based (Snelson, 2011) social media platform that not only obviously warrants, but has rightly gained, significant attention from broad swathes of the social sciences (Inter alia: Auger, 2013; Burgess, 2008; Downing, 2020; Gall et al., 2015). However, because of its exclusively video-based content (excluding comments here for the moment), it requires quite labourintense, human-driven, approaches. A good example being how a series of related videos was analysed for their deviance or conformity to a “founding meme” to gain insights into the mutation of online content and communication (Gall et al., 2015). This required researchers to cover a large range of videos (200) searching for 78 themes, before moving on to analyse a smaller subsample in depth (Gall et al., 2015). Clearly this is extremely labour-intensive. Some progress has been made in terms of attempting to automate some of these processes (Kuehne et al., 2019) but there remains a long way to go before social science scholars can confidently apply machine learning to YouTube videos. The problem is in part due to the complexity of multimodal data—text or even speech are complex enough, but layer this with images, video, irony, sarcasm, cut in samples of existing well-known videos that have a specific resonance and the almost infinite possibilities become clear.

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However, further qualitative methods have to be asked as the format, functions and uses of platforms proliferate and mushroom in unpredictable ways that bring security applications into, and indeed out of, a range of social media functionalities. It would have been difficult to conceive of, even several years ago, that the geolocation functions that enable Uber to allocate drivers to customers, or Tinder or Grinder to link possible romantic or sexual partners would be developed for such a direct security application as matching targets to munitions in the war in Ukraine (Parker, 2022). This is also something that is evident in terms of attempting to measure discourse on a range of platforms where it is not possible to produce or “catch” full or partial data sets for later analysis. For example, the de-platforming of groups such as ISIS or far-right extremists from “mainstream” sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to less open, more encrypted alternatives such as telegram (Prothero, 2019; Rogers, 2020) or signal, a move encouraged for everyone by a tweet from Elon Musk that simply said “use signal” (20 Minutes, 2021). The discourse shared in these apps is difficult, if at times impossible, to track and monitor as a researcher, although there has been some progress in infiltrating telegram channels of extremists (Davey & Weinberg, 2021) but this still does not mean that it is possible to get a nice, neat record of data like the excel spreadsheets that even free tools such as TAGS can generate for Twitter data (López-Fierro et al., 2021) based, however, on the incomplete Twitter API. Additionally, the development of apps that are predicated on the ephemeral nature of content, capturing which by screenshot will cause the creator to be notified and then possibly to block you, exemplified by Snapchat, requires new qualitative approaches to be developed. This is where approaches that meld traditional social sciences approaches to new digital realities emerge, such as the online ethnographic methods “Netnography” need to be considered for their suitability to “observing” such data. 3.3.1

Digital Demographics: Lessons from the Fake Warren Buffett and the Twitter Blue Tick

Social media, as already stated, is not a “flat” landscape and there exists a range of contours and inequalities between users. Taking this discussion further, it is important to ask questions about who exactly is being studied when we seek to understand social media from a critical security studies perspective. This is of the upmost importance when we consider how any

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particular implementation of a method or methodology, or indeed a more experimental “bricolage” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) can be taken to give particular conclusions. Social media complicates these understandings in ways that are possibly not so acute in a range of areas where critical security methods have been far more theorised and developed, such as in important areas such as listening to migrant stories (Johnson, 2012) where migrants can be identified, spoken to and identified as materially “real” and not a “fake” migrant that is part of a large state sponsored bot network. One piece of lay press coverage of social media actually, accidently, offers some significant insight into some of the issues with social media from the perspective of methodologies and research challenges. This is the story of the fake Warren Buffett Twitter account. I, myself, stumbled upon this account as a re-tweet on my Twitter feed and I was shocked that an account, with Warren Buffett’s photo and pertaining to be the official account of the business magnate dispensing metaphysical life advice through self-help quotes about the meanings of life, death and success. I was quite shocked, and must admit somewhat impressed that a multi-billionaire would spend their time doing this and put this down to a greater reflectiveness on the meaning of life necessitated by Warren’s old age. Not satisfied, I turned to google, only to find that there was a polemic raging about this being a fake account (Mcmurry, 2018). Before this book dips into the range of good research that seeks to identify the particulars of the unrepresentative demographics present on social media, this example demonstrates that significant problems exist for the social media researcher in identifying exactly who it is producing the content that we are analysing. Twitter attempts to make some headway here through their “blue tick” (Barsaiyan & Sijoria, 2021; Kabaku¸s & Sim¸ ¸ sek, 2019; Kirabo et al., 2021) designation that “verifies” an account as authentic. While this is an “in demand” feature and can be seen as a mark of an “elite” or “influential” account, Twitter restricts this designation significantly and there is not specific process through which a user can apply for it, and thus become verified. Rather, it is something that Twitter defines vaguely as accounts of “public interest” (Kabaku¸s & Sim¸ ¸ sek, 2019). This blue tick designation does not exist in a vacuum, but rather has an effect on the engagement that tweets received—during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ugandan government used both traditional and social media to raise awareness, and within social media the accounts with blue ticks received greater levels of engagement (Kirabo et al., 2021).

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Thus this demonstrates the inherent issues with knowing who exactly is on the other side of the social media post. This can become even more difficult on other platforms where the biographical information is even sparser and even a limited verification scheme like the blue tick does not exist. An example of this being the app Snapchat and the issues faced on a study of this app featured in this book which looked at the use of the app in creating insecurity through crime, violence and fraud. Employing a passive netnographic approach, which involved viewing and logging the posts in a diary, there is no way to actually verify that any of the accounts really either sold drugs, weapons or could commit the kinds of fraud they claimed to be able to, without the researcher actually contracting their illegal services. Clearly this is something that was both unethical and illegal; thus, their claims could not be independently verified. Additionally, there are important questions of the education, literacy and technological divides and inequalities that exist globally that exclude many from the ownership of the devices, and the fast data connectivity required, and indeed even the literacy to be able to compose a tweet (Ali, 2011). The digital divide is not, however, simply between the global North and South, but also exists within national, regional and even local contexts (Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006). Thus, there are a number of nuances here that need to be understood in considering social media research in any context. An example of this is in the generational differences in social media platform preferences (Petrock, 2021). Gen Z, so the argument goes, are more likely to use the increasingly multimodal platforms of Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram opening up significant possible research problems. Examples of these are the more complex and timeconsuming nature of analysis of things like Instagram stories or TikTok videos compared to text-based tweets. Additionally, the ephemeral nature of many of these videos, exemplified by Snapchat that deletes videos by design, means that historic data sets are impossible to come by. Thus, it is not simply that those in the global North are more represented, but also that there are differences in access to the digital tools of social media within Northern societies themselves, by income, education, age and a range of social factors. Thus we cannot oversimplify nor overgeneralise even the largest scale social media studies as indicative of large, homogeneous global shifts in opinion, securitisation or populism for example. However, even on the more micro-scale generalisation needs to be met with caution because even in highly literate, industrialised societies with

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high rates of smart phone, computer and internet penetration, it is not the case that everyone is on social media, nor that the various cleavages and social groups within any population are equally represented on any given social media platform at any given time. It is worth observing that Twitter users in the USA were more likely to represent a younger demographic and more likely to display liberal values versus the general population as a whole (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019). Thus the fact that Twitter is the most sampled platform due to its, while imperfect and/or expensive, somewhat open access data policy, clearly any conclusions are those drawn on a quite specific and unrepresentative population. Going further, referring back to the Warren Buffett example, owing to the lack of requirements to “prove” who one is on social media in most cases, we must take authenticity on face value. Additionally, nor are there any rules about needing to create content as your legal name nor the need to display a range of biographical, census-question-like characteristics such as age, sex, race, alongside one’s social media posts and thus delving deeper into data trends is difficult if not impossible. For critical security studies, this is obviously limiting in terms of building an idea of your sample population. Additionally, this issue of a lack of representativeness is also complicated for any specific social event as a negative consequence of the increasing attention paid to “deplatforming” (Rogers, 2020) users and/or deleting content that falls foul of hate speech rules or other forms of censorship (REF). As such, once we get to building a data set around any specific political or security event such as a terror attack or the declaration of war, there will be content which is possibly important from a security perspective that will be missing from the data set due to the suspension of accounts or the removal of content and due to the lack of access to any decision-making processes or this de-platformed content the scholar can never be sure what is missing. 3.3.2

Digital Data: Financial, Ethical and Access Challenges

As digital politics, social media, the “post-truth” era and populism become increasingly important parts of even the most introductory political science syllabus, It is increasingly common to be asked by students to supervise social media-based dissertations at the end of their courses. Many of the requests I have received have been extremely timely, interesting and well considered ways to push the broader field of social media, politics and international relations forward. However, the crushing

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moment for both of us often arises when I mention a key research consideration that is nothing to do with concepts, puzzles or even research question design—which are often done very well—but rather “viability”. This often draws a puzzled expression which only gets worse when I begin to ask the student questions about where/how/when they plan to collect their data. It often seems from the outside that this is self-evident—you get it from the platform, you download it and then the fun can begin. This is, however, far from the truth with many social media platforms that all present their own access problems especially with complete, historical data sets. An example of this can be seen clearly with a very popular target, popular for both scholars and students alike—Twitter. Free and open access to historical, complete firehose Twitter data was not possible until the launch of the new Twitter academic API in 2021 (Ahmed, 2021). While Twitter has made commendable efforts recently to facilitate greater academic access to its historical data, this is far from complete nor straightforward to access—one must apply for an account which can take some time to do in this case. Previously, scholars were limited to one of three options. Firstly, they had to purchase this data through a thirdparty provider—for example the now decommissioned Texifter that was powered by the GNIP power tracker. Secondly, they could use the standard Twitter API. A problem of using Twitter API as a data source is that it can never guarantee that it will produce 100% of available data set (McCormick et al., 2017). This is because the search API is a “black box” whose working is not known to the public. However, it is generally considered a reliable means by which to obtain a near 100% data set, even though researchers can never fully know the completeness of their data set (McCormick et al., 2017). Thirdly, a range of scholars used programmes to “web scrape” data from Twitter—a practice which was illegal and violated the Twitter terms of service but was widely tolerated. However, this is an access example from one, quite specific, social media platform and the lessons are limited in how generalisable they are across a landscape of every expanding, ever proliferating numbers of social media platforms. Indeed, it is not just the increase in the number of platforms and the specifics of their gate-keeping processes that require greater reflection on this process, rather it is also increasingly varied nature of the data which platforms produce. The rise in popularity of the photographbased platform Instagram has produced a range of approaches, ranging from qualitative and quantitative analysis of the aspects of the platform

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data obtained from its API, including the text that can accompany photos, in addition to interviews and surveys targeting platform users (Yang, 2021). Instagram is part of a broader shift in social media platforms to smartphone application-based forms of interaction. As “relatively closed technical systems” (Light et al., 2018, p. 881), these present specific data access questions that can make them quite difficult targets for academic study. An extreme example can be seen in the closed network app telegram, which has become popular with violent extremists due to its perceived lack of censorship (Davey & Weinberg, 2021; Rogers, 2020). Apps are increasingly a subject for methodological innovation, including the application of a walk through method for the studying of apps (Light et al., 2018) and the application of hacking techniques to apps (Aradau et al., 2019). However, certain apps, such as Snapchat present even bigger data access problems because it is set up as a “self-destructing app” because the content disappears (Bayer et al., 2016). While this clearly affords users higher levels of privacy (Bayer et al., 2016) which makes them interesting because they have been conceptualised as “reserved for closest relationships, not strangers” (Poltash, 2012), they remain difficult to research because of the ephemeral nature of their data. At least a partial solution to this particular issue will be presented in the next part of this chapter that seeks to provide some methodological notes on social media that form the basis of the techniques used in the examples presented in this book. However, clearly data access issues are not something that will go away for researchers and are in fact likely to become ever more acute as platforms become ever more diverse.

3.4 Digital Approaches to Critical Security Studies: Methodological Notes This chapter has thus far been dedicated to the broader questions around methods, methodology, ethics, demographics and data access questions. It now moves on to providing some methodological notes that are aimed to solve two key purposes. Firstly, they are the methods employed to analyse the data that provides the empirical examples in the chapters of this book. Secondly, they seek to offer some insights to prospective scholars on the different approaches that can be applied to social media to get at key critical security studies questions. They are, however, by no means exhaustive nor intended to be a complete and final word

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on the subject. Rather, scholars are encouraged to continue the process of methodological “bricolage” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 3) in considering forming and operationalising their own methodological approaches. 3.4.1

Social Network Analysis and Critical Security Studies

The first methodology to be tackled here is social network analysis. This approach has found widespread adoption in a range of fields in the social sciences and beyond. Within this, the central purpose of SNA is to examine what structures relationships between individuals (W. Ahmed & Bath, 2015; Gardy et al., 2011; Scott, 2017). The applications here are thus quite clear in terms of considering from the security perspective how narratives of security spread and indeed who is important in spreading them. There exists a tension in the theory that social network analysis speaks directly to. The Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) offers a highly hierarchical understanding of security discourses, where elites speak “down” to the audience. In contrast to this, vernacular security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016) seeks to understand non-elite security discourses and conceptions. However, while the social media landscape clearly opens up the possibility of a range of non-elite voices to discuss and construct security, it is by no means “flat” and the way that individuals interact with each other and share each other’s messages mean that hierarchies emerge with “viral” or “influential” social media posts (Anger & Kittl, 2011; del Fresno García et al., 2016; Downing & Dron, 2020a). Social network analysis provides important insights here because it can show which individuals emerge as important, but connections which they are embedded in (De Nooy et al., 2018). Thus, a fundamental feature of SNA is that it examines the structural relationships between socially connected actors (Davies, 2009). Applying SNA to Twitter data offers many insights into social media behaviour including establishing patterns of situational awareness, alongside insights into the salience of particular messages (Ahmed & Lugovic, 2018); with this in mind, it is possible to examine conversations on Twitter not just in terms of their content, but also in their particular patterns of information flow (Himelboim et al., 2017). Thus, if we want to understand which users become influential in security discussions, or how the relations between particular users are

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structured, and how security discourses become “influential”, move, and spread. This can be done with two open-source programmes that enable scholars relatively straightforward paths into the complexities of social network analysis. The first is Gephi which was developed with far broader applications than social media data in mind. Gephi can be used to generate social network graphs (sociograms) that demonstrate how messages are shared, how different behaviours on social media cluster and relationships between different clusters. It uses a 3D rendering engine to create these insights into complex data sets (Bastian et al., 2009). This separates the data field into the users, called “nodes” and their connections to each other, called “edges” (Grandjean, 2016). This provides insights into the salience of particular messages (Ahmed & Lugovic, 2018) through this relationship of nodes and edges and the information flow necessitated by these relationships (Himelboim et al., 2017). The resulting charts are useful because they can structure tweets into different clusters that share the same piece of information, for example a particular news article link, giving insight into the “echo chambers” that individuals may find themselves in, and these can be separated out for analysis as well as being analysed as part of the larger network. Another option that can be deployed, that requires less IT specialism is NodeXL, which works as a plug in to Microsoft Excel (Smith et al., 2009). It was designed to specifically simplify social network analysis tasks (Smith, 2013). Another advantage of NodeXL over Gephi is that it can also be used as a stand-alone data collection tool for Twitter data (Ahmed & Lugovic, 2018) which means that it feeds directly into the application for analysis, unlike Gephi which can require substantial data formatting to get it organised in a suitable format to feed into the programme to draw the network graphs. 3.4.2

Netnography, “Self-Destruction” and Critical Security Studies

An issue arises in the move increasingly to apps for social media, some of which make significant use of ephemeral data that is obsolete by design— i.e. Snapchat. This raises significant questions about social media and what exactly we mean when we use the term (Moyle et al., 2019). For example, are we discussing apps or explorer-based platforms or both (Moyle et al., 2019)? Are we discussing active or passive platforms (Moyle et al., 2019), where users simply consume content or they also produce content? It is

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important to also not only consider social media apps as producing data regarding discourses, as increasingly apps are making use of location-based services. This raises important issues about the ethical concerns and confidentiality of a range of mining data, if even possible, whether through manual or automated means (Moyle et al., 2019). This is part of the evolution of social media and its diversity that researchers, policymakers and journalists clearly need to consider when making statements about social media. However as with every evolution, this raises important discussions about methods and methodologies as examining implications for critical security studies on a platform that operates on a smartphone and uses ephemeral data that cannot be captured opens up significant difficulties for researchers. However, all is not lost because of a range of existing digital methods. An example will be given here about how a netnography approach was considered and applied to the study of insecurity through the app Snapchat. Snapchat has innovated over and above more “traditional” platforms like Facebook (Utz et al., 2015) and has given users new possibilities for self-expression (Utz et al., 2015). This has been considered a problematic app for researchers due to its structure as a “self-destructing app” because the content disappears, it affords users higher levels of privacy (Bayer et al., 2016). Another aspect of such applications that needs to be questioned in this context is the closed nature of such networks where “snapchat use reserved for closest relationships, not strangers” (Poltash, 2012). In terms of the ways that such apps generate insecurity through acting as a place where illegal activities are promoted and advertised, this is not strictly the case. The network infiltrated here where the netnographic study was undertaken began, and gained some traction, because of the advertising and free sharing of user names. So there is a paradox here with such apps, used for confidential activities such as “sexting” using Snapchat to exchange intimate pictures and videos because of the apps ephemeral nature hinting at the app being more appropriate for intimate content (Poltash, 2012; Vaterlaus et al., 2016), but in this case being used to generate as much exposure as possible for illegal activities. This tallies with broader discussion in the field of technology and insecurity, where drug dealers have long used technology as a means to increase sales and exposure to possible markets (Moyle et al., 2019). The ephemeral nature of the output of Snapchat raises significant data collection issues because there is no API that can be used to retrieve data. While one can screenshot a Snapchat, this is reported to the content

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creator and the sex workers observed as part of this study constantly warned against this, as anyone screen shooting would be blocked straightaway. Thus, another method was required that was not obvious to users. The “walkthrough method” offered an important inroad into navigating app research more generally (Light et al., 2018) and makes important observations about app study more generally which is an important emerging part of the field. However, this would not capture the richness of the data and the means through which insecurity could be generated through apps that utilise multimodal outputs of video, audio and text. Netnography allows for such rich data to be analysed through the application of ethnographic approaches of participant observation in the online field (Kozinets, 2002). Here, it is argued that it is possible to have a complete methodological approach with only the online data collected on the internet (Kozinets, 2002). Thus in this regard, there is no need for offline data such as interviews, focus groups and the broader engagement with the participants themselves. This assumption dovetails with the needs of a methodology to precisely not engage with participants who are advertising illegal activities and could pose potential physical harm to the researcher (Kozinets, 2002). However, this is not without its detractors. There exists a key split between “active” and “passive” netnography (Alavi et al., 2010). “passively monitoring the community and integrating the gathered information” (Alavi et al., 2010, p. 87). There are many critiques of a “passive” non-participatory netnography (Costello et al., 2017) as clearly this does not allow the voice of the participant to emerge. A significant split occurs in conceptions of the need to communicate with participants. For example, some scholars argue for the centrality to the methodology of having in-depth conversations with participants and identifying oneself clearly as a researcher (Kurikko & Tuominen, 2012). Indeed, this is deeply context-dependent and I argue it is wrong for Costello et al. (2012) to critique scholars for not doing this. Clearly in a security context where it is highly likely to be dis-engaged by participants if a researcher identifies themselves as such it is not viable, nor advisable. However, even here it is seen as something that is suitable for studying politically sensitive and illegal acts (Gilchrist & Ravenscroft, 2011) and is an unobtrusive methodology to investigate online behaviour (Cherif & Miled, 2013). This method has found wider adoption outside of just examining sensitive topics and has been applied to the study of consumer behaviour (Kozinets, 2002). This has demonstrated how

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netnography enables the establishment of how online communities thrive on co-creation (Kozinets, 2002). This does not negate, however, the significant ethical concerns that emerge from applying participant observation to participants that are not asked for their consent, and are also engaged here in illegal activities. This is central to scholars using a passive netnography to researchsensitive topics (Langer & Beckman, 2005). A key question here becomes centred around whether netnography needs specific ethical provision or just the more general application of media and communication studies ethics? (Langer & Beckman, 2005). For this study, all participants were anonymised and their Snapchat handles removed from the data to protect their anonymity. Concerns are not limited here, as the operationalisation of netnography, like ethnography, is an important question (Pollok et al., 2014; Tunçalp & Lê, 2014) as there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Here, a valid critique is that scholars often take the idea of a netnographic method as self-evident and neither describe nor evaluate the process of their netnography (Tunçalp & Lê, 2014). This is important due to the divergent and diverse nature of the methodology and also a variety of approaches (Tunçalp & Lê, 2014). This is especially true when we need to consider how the idea of an online, “netnography” patches into both the question of application to the specifics of apps and then in the context of seeking to study and understand insecurity. Most netnographic studies only examine texts to the detriment of multimodal outputs (Costello et al., 2017). This is paradoxical given the increasingly multimodal nature of the online environment especially where social media apps are increasingly making use of videos, images and sounds. Also, the positionality of the researcher needs to be considered in a similar vein to a “real world” ethnography (Costello et al., 2012). Being neither a criminal, nor a sex worker, nor a recreation drug user and nor a law enforcement representative, it is important to withhold judgement from the individuals and their activities and as far as possible not allow my position to interfere with data collection and interpretation. The study here followed a six-step process (Kozinets, 2002). This involved research planning, entrée, data collection, data analysis, ethical standards and research representation (Kozinets, 2002). This should not be seen as a strictly linear process because like real-world ethnography, there has to be room for the data to lead the researcher. Additionally, the nature of studying networks means that throughout the study participants

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are added, and then also fall away. Here a modified form of snowball sampling was used (Goodman, 1961). Snowball sampling in-person involves asking research participants, possibly identified at random, to name further possible participants and so on (Goodman, 1961). Indeed, this does not have to be random, and qualitative sociology has used this sampling technique to great effect especially in the investigation of deviant populations that are hard to reach (Etikan, 2016). This involves a nonrandom identification of someone from this hard to reach population, who then recommends individuals from their network (Etikan, 2016). This study employed a passive form of “promotional snowball sampling”. This was developed and employed because of two key concerns. Firstly, it was not possible to ask participants to recommend further participants because of the deviant nature of their activities and the covert nature of the passive netnographic approach. Put simply, a request for sample suggestions would likely have resulted in being blocked. Secondly, it because quickly evident that this approach was not required as in the context of Snapchat, participants would frequently recommend and promote the services of associates from other domains. For example, drug dealers would not promote other drug dealers, but they would promote a sex worker or a document fraudster. The exception here was sex workers who would promote each other frequently. Thus the first two planning and entrée phases would be revisited on the induction of new network members. As mentioned, data collection would not be as simple as downloading data or being able to keep a direct digital copy because of the app notifying content creators of screen capture. This was overcome by taking extensive “field notes” at the daily twice daily checking of the Snapchat network—at 9 am and 9 pm. This was completed digitally and directly into a word document over a two-year period from September 2019 until September 2021. This is clearly an extremely long period and it is not a requirement that a netnography collects such a range of data. Data analysis required bringing some order to what became a chaotic and wide spread range of activities that mushroomed from one drug dealer to a range of criminal and social activities. This required creating themes of both particular criminal activities, but also of the ways in which insecurity is constructed, presented and indeed branded and marketed. This is important because even in the field of “real world” ethnography, far more attention has been paid final reports than to how to organise and analyse field notes (Naidoo, 2012). Additionally, there is no consensus on

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how field notes should be written and even their value in ethnographic research (Naidoo, 2012). “Field notes are important because they involve the critical acts of sense making and interpretation” (Naidoo, 2012, p. 9) which clearly impact the research findings and results. This is in part due to the diversity of ethnographic applications and additionally the different ways in which practitioners work with such a highly personalisable and personal methodology. This can be numerical or narrative (Angrosino, 2007) depending on the research outcomes desired. In the case of the type of netnography developed here for use with ephemeral applications, a narrative analysis was better suited to capturing the richness of the data in terms of not only the types of insecurity occurring on Snapchat, but from a critical security perspective, the narrative ways in which those perpetuating insecurity constructed their branding, identity and so forth. However, on reflection, some issues did arise applying this netnographic method to social media. Perhaps, too much data was collected. An issue with netnography, and perhaps ethnography more broadly, is indeed when to stop. It was not required to have such a significant time investment in the project (730 days) nor to view so many individual snaps (5110) to get at the key theoretical take-home messages. The time investment is something important to consider when designing a netnographic approach to social media analysis because of resource allocation and the possibility of diminishing returns in terms of uncovering novel conceptual, and to a point, empirical content. Indeed, it is possible that actual screenshots could have been taken with a second smart phone or a digital camera—however, this would have raised significant ethical issues in this case because of not having consent from the research participants, and the deviant nature of their actions that could have compromised their identities. Clearly, there are numerous possible applications of such an approach to the broader social media context. 3.4.3

Digital Discourse: Security Speak and Social Media

In my initial attraction to using social media as a ground to further understand critical security studies in the wider world, text as discourse was the element which stuck out. Put quite simply, it was a curiosity about how particular security issues were being discussed on Twitter in, at first 140, and then 280, characters. Little was I to know at the time that this would be a far more complex and multimodal undertaking as Twitter became increasingly composed of text, hyperlinks, images, videos and

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user-generated memes. This does, however, tally with a broader theoretical observation that “discourse analysis has become an enormously popular method among critical security studies scholars” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 116) and more broadly about discourse in the context of critical security studies in that “‘discourse’ is the meaning making activity” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 58). Thus, meaning-making in this context goes much further than text to cover the multimodal world of social media output. However, the issues presented by the discursive turn in critical security studies more broadly does require some attention because these broader debates play out in some interesting ways when we consider their specific relationship to new media. A key starting point is the broader questions that are necessitated by the complex relationship between material aspects of security and discourse. Within critical security studies, scholars have “tended to disavow matter in favour of a linguistic turn” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 58). Social media’s perhaps most obvious possible contribution to the critical security studies field lies in the realm of discourse and the discursive turn. Social media has become synonymous with being able to “say” and to a lesser extent to “show” through images extensive ranges of the human experience by those who previously would not have had the opportunity to either contribute to the debate by “saying” or “showing” on the global stage. This does not mean that these people are “heard” or “seen”—those are two very different and highly complex questions that we will return to later. From the perspective of research design and methods, it is this immense pooling of “saying” and “showing” that most obviously presents researchers with a pool of data to collect, analyse and draw conclusions on. Here, a key observation is this discursive nature of this data and the need to consider aspects of discourse analysis as key means through which to analyse this data. This discourse focus comes at a cost because there is a much closer, multidirectional relationship between discourse and materiality than it may seem—security is constructed at the interface of discourse and “things” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 58). Discourse can influence “things” and clearly “things” create and influence discourse—neither exist separately nor in isolation. This should not be neglected in the context of social media where the “objects” seem quite distant from behind a computer or mobile phone screen. Nor should we seek to entirely remove the material from the discursive in our analysis of discourse on social

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media because of the interface, if complex, between social media and the material world. For example, social media has become a central focus of discourse creation around the Ukraine conflict with some asking if Ukraine is the first truly social media war (Suciu, 2022). The importance of materiality to discourse can be seen in the emergence of the “open source intelligence” community in the context of this conflict (Moran, 2022). This involves individuals’ miles away from the conflict using social media to collect data and identify battlefield positions, sometimes facilitating battlefield strikes or identifying perpetrators for war crimes trials, but also to report their findings to the wider world (Moran, 2022). Social media also presents a fertile ground for often problematic explanations of the relationship between online and real-world dynamics in other ways that go further than simply the relationship between materiality and the creation of discourse. There is also the complex relationship of what discourses on social media actually interact with events and phenomena in the social world. Some explanations have centred on the decisive role social media has played in the offline world, for example arguing that online jokes and memes won the US presidential election for Donald Trump (Nussbaum, 2017). However, in-depth analysis of the Arab spring uprising in Egypt has argued that discourse came after political movements on the ground and not the other way around (Wolfsfeld et al., 2013) questioning the centrality often ascribed to social media as the key mobilising force in these events. However borrowing the words of critical security scholars “that does not mean that words do not have real effects in the world” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 113). However, it is also not straightforward to substantiate or predict real-world effects (Wolfsfeld et al., 2013). This is also not to homogenise two very different national contexts, the USA and Egypt, nor two very different events, a mass uprising and a democratic election. Rather, this is just to caution scholars from making overly simplistic extrapolations from discourses that appear online and to attempt to nuance their findings in light of these complex relations between social media and the offline world. This said, discourse still has an important role and is still a valid object of study and at times, it may be beyond the scope of the study, the ability of the scholar and even the material limits of the study for it to go beyond discourse. In light of this, it is important to consider exactly what discourse means in a given social media study in light of the valuable work already done in critical security studies when it comes to better understand the discursive turn. We can begin with some basic and well-established observations

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that hold true: “Language is political, social and cultural: discourse analysis is the rigorous study of writing, speech and other communicative events in order to understand these political, social and cultural dynamics” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 113). However, the discussion does not stop here—it merely begins as discursive methods in the social sciences more generally, and in the critical security studies field more specifically, are extremely diverse. These can be “plastic”—identifying a narrative and then judging deviance from this “master narrative” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 114) or “elastic” plotting the changes over time (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 114) as epitomised in the Copenhagen school that seeks to understand security through the emergence of a particular speech act. Genealogical discourse analysis on the other hand seeks ruptures, silences and marginalised voices within the realm of security (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 114). Analysing social media stands, however, in a certain methodological contrast to one key observation about discourse methods in critical security studies: In each of these strategies, plastic, elastic and genealogical, the researcher must be open to the discursive evidence, and the election of source texts will pull towards one conclusion or another. (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 114)

This is an important question for the analysis of critical security studies in light of social media because it exposes two divergent trends within all platform-based data sources in my experience. On the one hand, it rings true—if we go to Twitter and collect data based on keywords or a hashtag, or if we attempt to identify a corpus of YouTube videos, inherent in this process is a certain selection bias. We may then miss much of the discourse about a particular subject that either falls outside of our corpus, or which articulates security discourses outside of the keywords/hashtags that we choose. Especially where resources are scarce, as is the case for many academics and students alike, this in unavoidable and does not per se render a particular study pointless, but rather limited that all academic studies are. However, the second trend I want to highlight here somewhat contradicts and also compliments this first assumption. That is one never knows what a particular data set will reveal. Social media analysis contains a real exploratory and random dimension that cannot be ruled out. Precisely because social media “democratizes” communication and contains a huge range of “vernacular security” (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis,

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2019) voices, there are few constraints to how individuals can and will express, subvert and contest security narratives. The online sphere, being “multimodal” as it is with images, text, video and audio needs to be viewed methodologically as containing the unexpected. The most ardent data science-driven positive research orientation cannot count this out because someone, somewhere will take the most serious threat to global security and make a meme out of it. Thus, if “The question of reflexivity is equally germane to discourse analysis” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 116), the researcher must double down on reflexivity and openness to the unexpected when considering the vitally important interface of discursive methods with their research. Thus, we do well to make significant efforts on social media when applying discursive methods to “avoid misinterpretations and overemphasis on certain text while ignoring alternatives” (Mutlu & Salter, 2013, p. 116). This is a broader discussion around research bias in that if we go looking for something specific, we are more likely to find it and possibly ignore alternatives or countervailing trends. Beyond these important methodological concerns, there are some important factors to consider when thinking about applying discourse analysis as a method beyond social media that also holds true in the context of digital discourses. Discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary methodology (Brown et al., 1983) that seeks to understand how language enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities (Gee, 2004). Within this, critical discourse analysis (CDA) seeks to bring power relations into the analysis to examine how power relations are established and reproduced through the use of language (Fairclough, 2010). Discourse analysis, however, presents simply an approach to understanding text, and thus requires operationalisation to be completed in a robust and reproducible fashion. None of the above says anything about the nuts and bolts of using this method on any particular data set. There are, however, many options available for the scholar to operationalise the broader methodological debates about discourse analysis into a particular discourse. I have experience operationalising these important observations via thematic analysis which gives the opportunity for scholars to develop and apply themes in a reflective fashion to often complex data sets. Within this exists a 6-step coding methodology (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The themes emerged through the sixphase method which involved: familiarisation with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes among codes, reviewing themes, designing

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and naming themes and then producing the final report (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). Thus, several passes through the data are required to establish initial coding categories, and then to follow this up with further refinement and adjustment to the coding categories. This gives the reflective dimension to the thematic analysis because of the ability to go back and reform, possibly delete and even add themes that emerge which is common in social media data sets because it is impossible to know what one will find. Discourse is importantly not only text, and international relations have recently become increasingly attenuated to the way that graphics, images and non-text forms of discourse are important in understanding a range of international political developments (Hansen, 2011, 2018; Williams, 2003). While thematic approaches can work, there are required different kinds of operational methods if a scholar is to take account of the imagebased content that exists alongside. This includes aspects of social media such as Twitter that contains user generic graphical memes. One of many possible approaches that would be applied here is a semiotic approach to facilitate understanding of the symbols, signs and idioms employed visually (Eco, 1976; Hodge, 2014; Jessop, 2004). Within the international relations context, semiotics have mainly received attention through the sub-field of “social semiotics” (Hodge, 2014) where meaning-making is studied within the broader social context of a particular international relations problem (Hodge, 2014; Kuznetsova, 2021). However, meaning-making in a semiotics sense has also been applied to graphical representations of particular social issues (Harrison, 2003). Here, images are seen as “not the result of a singular, isolated, creative activity, but is itself a social process” (Harrison, 2003). This adds a possible important element to the study of memes and other graphic outputs on social media in light of security studies because often they are part of not only a broader political discussion, but also because of the recycling of meme content. Images come from somewhere and some shared about securityrelated issues on social media are indeed original—however, many are not. They can be shared from a source, or in the case of memes, user-generated or user-edited drawing on an existing series of visual idioms (Davidson, 2012) that demonstrate adherence or deviance to a particular norm (Gall et al., 2015). As such, in line with the broader move in IR to include a broader range of source data, there are numerous possibilities to take into account the multimodal aspects of the social media environment.

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3.5 Conclusions on Methods, Critical Security and Social Media This chapter sought to delve into the intersection between methods, methodologies, critical security studies and social media analysis. This is a large undertaking that undoubtedly warrants more attention as time passes, critical security studies advances, social media continues to proliferate and new social and political events unfold. This will necessitate many of these debates to be far from settled and will require constant attention to be placed on how critical security studies gets to grips with not only the larger theoretical and conceptual challenges posed by social media but also the specific methodological approaches that will need to be further developed to account for these changes. As such, while international relations and critical security studies have made significant strides in recent decades to not only diversify methods and approaches within a highly conservative discipline such as international relations, much more needs to be done. Thus, it is important for the field to recognise that social media studies, communications technology-based methods “count” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) as valuable research subjects. There remain, however, significant challenges to scholars within the field. The demographics of social media, and specifically the enduring “digital divides” (Ali, 2011; Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006) present some specific questions for critical security studies and its much troubled “emancipatory” commitments and potential. While social media does give some of the previously marginalised voice, many remain excluded. Additionally, data access questions remain fundamental to research within the field, and it is an unfortunately reality that much important and insightful data that could shed important lights into evolving areas of security on social media are off limits to researchers, or disappear before they can be captured. However, all is not lost as the foundations laid within the field of critical security studies and critical methods provide solid and fertile ground upon which greater insights into the possibilities of social media can be more fully exploited as clearly this digital form of “data”, “performance” or “discourse” is neither going away, nor likely to become less important in the understanding or construction of key features of security in an increasingly unstable international system. The methodological notes at the end of the chapter, while neither exhaustive nor suitable for all cases, offers some insights into what is possible, often with quite limited

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human and capital resources. It is also important to remain conscious that much methodological work in social media studies, whether directed to questions of critical understandings of security or not, are products of methodological “bricolage” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) that necessitate creative thinking, trial and error, success and failure. Thus, there remains much to be done here, and an ever-evolving context that will provide fertile ground for the advancement of security studies for decades to come. The recent war in Ukraine has caused a renewed, often journalistic, interest in the more “material” aspects of security and how they relate to social media—for example how social media could be fuelling a new kind of “fog of war” (Timberg & Harwell, 2022) and indeed how things like applications using geolocation technologies typical of apps like Uber are emerging as efficient means to allocate targets to artillery and drones (Parker, 2022) in tandem with Elon Musk’s “StarLink” satellite internet service. In many ways, in fact, some of these developments may even be easier to link much of the critical security studies methodology already in existence than large-scale discursive text or user-generated memes which are by no means less important, and which provide important contextual discussions and constructions within contemporary security debates.

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CHAPTER 4

Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age

4.1

Introducing Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age

While terrorism pre-dates 9/11, the attacks on the world trade centre has been well established as a watershed moment in global security (Council of Councils, 2021) and it is quite difficult to overstate the effect that the ensuing “war on terror” had on the architecture and practice of security in the global system. More than a decade later, the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan concert hall attacks in Paris would once again catapult “terrorism” into the public eye (Titley et al., 2017). However, beyond the obvious differences in geographical, cultural and temporal context—a decade is an eternity in global security—a key aspect of the discursive landscape had shifted in this period. 9/11 was remarkable at the time because in 17 minutes after the first passenger jet, American Airlines flight 11, impacted the north tower, the advances in media technology in the previous century allowed the global media, present in abundance in New York City, to train their electronic “eyes” onto the ensuing fire and then to broadcast the second impact, this time United Airlines flight 175, on the south tower. Thus, “the 9/11 spectacle of terror was a global media event” (Kellner, 2007, p. 123). Media technologies thus enabled terrorism to move from something abstract, where individuals at best would receive shots of the aftermath of a car bombing for example, to something that was captured and could be consumed live. The ensuing machinations of the Bush-Cheney © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_4

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administration, and global allies such as Tony Blair, would also make rich fodder for studies of elite discourses on constructions of securitisation a la Copenhagen school focus on security elites (Buzan et al., 1997). So if 9/11 was broadcast live, and 90% of people at the time got their coverage of the events from TV and only 5% online (Hartig & Doherty, 2021), Charlie Hebdo was “tweeted” (An et al., 2016). While the established news media still plays an important role in the means by which individuals receive their news vis-à-vis terror attacks, social media plays an important role that was not the case even a decade ago. Critical security studies has the possibility here to make some important contributions to understand terrorism in this new media field. It is thinking about this contribution that this chapter now turns to. There exists significant literature on social media and terrorism in terms of the use of communications technologies by terrorists, in particular the extensive use of such technologies by jihadists under the banner of the so-called Islamic State group (Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019). However, these are clearly not the only violent extremist groups that use social media, as the extreme right also makes use of social media to communicate. (Davey & Weinberg, 2021). While these are important contributions, this chapter discusses the possibilities for social media studies to compliment the scholarship on critical terrorism studies (CTS). CTS has already generated a significant and sustained critique of many aspects of terrorism-related security practices, such as the UK’s Prevent strategy (Azfar, 2011; Faure Walker, 2019; Qurashi, 2018). Importantly, CTS presents key opportunities for a deeper engagement with new communications technologies because of its overt constructivist and anti-problem-solving stances (Herring, 2008; Jackson, 2007; Jackson et al., 2007). Thus, its primary concern with the labelling and meaningmaking involved in defining terrorism enables a deep engagement with social media technologies as sites where this can take place. Thus, this chapter seeks to make some contributions to this broader field of critical terrorism studies by harnessing the overtly constructivist perspective of critical terrorism studies to examine the broader range of means by which terrorism has been constructed on social media. The contribution presented here centres around a question of resistance, and how social media can offer a space for resistance to terrorism, embodied by a threat by a non-state actor, and secondly embodied as resistance to a dominant discourse. Three discursive themes emerge here that are

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important, and in fact unexpected, means through which this resistance is structured on social media that gives a new impetus to the observation that “few dimensions of contemporary life remain untouched by its diffused effects” (Breen Smyth et al., 2008, p. 1). Not only has terrorism bleed into everyday life through a variety of cultural and creative forms, but the reverse is also true on social media in that everyday themes bleed back into the discussion of terrorism and in this case the various means through which resistance can occur. This is an important observation, and this chapter seeks to build on this unidirectional argument to show that it is rather a multidirectional process. Thus, terror is articulated through the symbols of everyday life through multidirectional, diffuse, cross-pollenating and symbiotic sense. It is not a unidirectional process that terrorism has come into contemporary life, but also that the themes, discourses and idioms of everyday life have been drawn into the re-definition, subversion and re-construction of terrorism. As such, this chapter presents two key themes out of which resistance to terrorism has been structured that highlight the importance of the opening up of international relations to the knowledge from other disciplines, notable sociology and criminology as advocated by the Paris school of securitisation (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). The empirical examples presented here offer some important insights into how critical security studies can better account for social media and the ways in which it intersects with questions of terrorism. Importantly, this looks into key questions about how social media offers a space for resistance against narratives of terrorism, taking into account the range of cultural symbols and narratives through which this is done. This takes examples of an ISIS terror threat against France, and the Twitter response to the Manchester bombing, and seeks to builds on literature that argues for the importance of terrorism as a facet of everyday culture (Erickson, 2008; Veloso & Bateman, 2013) and argue that the opposite is also true— that aspects of everyday culture are also important in how terrorism is constructed. This draws heavily on the tools of sociology that argues for the importance of local, city-based themes as nexus of human identity (Lynch, 1960; Westwood, 1987). An important, and surprising, aspect of both of these examples is the importance of football, and local football teams in Marseille and Manchester in constructions of terrorism. Football is under theorised in questions of critical security, with previous work concentrating on football hooligans in the emergence of the English

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Defence League and the Islamophobic narratives it produces (Garland & Treadwell, 2010).

4.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Terrorism in a Digital Age In considering the relationship between critical security studies, terrorism and social media, a range of key concerns emerge. There is initially the central concern of providing the key conceptual framework through which to examine this question of security and terrorism in the context of social media. Critical terrorism studies has risen to prominence within the field and draws on several historically critical approaches to security, such as social constructivism, to offer insights into terrorism away from the classical “problem-solving” concerns of classical security studies approaches to terrorism (Jackson, 2007).If we are to take seriously the critical terrorism studies claim that “terrorism” has gone beyond the pale of being a complex geo-strategic security questions and has become also a broader cultural phenomena (Breen Smyth et al., 2008), this needs some consideration. The existing work highlights how this occurs with books, movies comics and plays featuring a range of references to terrorism (Breen Smyth et al., 2008; Croft, 2006). However, considering this question in the light of the broader question of critical approaches to security patched to social media, social media changes this dynamic because it offers a much broader range of individuals the ability to twist, pull and subvert terrorism through the prism of a range of popular culture idioms and questions which as it stands is not adequately considered. There also needs to be some interrogation of the existing literature on the relationship between terrorism and social media. Here, key questions about how extremists utilise communications networks have been central to this work (Prothero, 2019) as well as more diverse approaches to understanding the relationship between terrorism and technology in the “e-jihad” (Rudner, 2017) where terror groups use a far wider range of web-based technologies than the relatively “newer” social media, web 2.0 technologies. Indeed, in terms of jihadism, the latter parts of the twentieth century were marked by concerns of Salafist groups spreading the message of global jihad through the analogue means of smuggled cassette tapes (Wiktorowicz, 2001). Thus, the relationship between terrorism and communications technologies is anything but new.

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Finally, it is also important to think about definitions of terrorism and what this can offer in terms of a discussion of critical security approaches to social media. This may seem paradoxical, as surely definitions must pre-suppose all discussions. In this case, however, with a phenomena such as terrorism that defies all attempts at clear definitions, whether in policy, practice or indeed the multiplicity of terrorist organisations globally, the inability to define is central to considering how social media further complicates this question of definition. Indeed, one can mount an argument that definitions of terrorism need to further push the envelope in that it has now become so prominent in popular discourse that a range of non-security themes, symbols and discourses have come to mark terrorism discussions on social media. Considering the scholarship on terrorism is important to understanding questions of terrorism and security on social media, going beyond this fairly obvious observation is a deeper requirement to question and unpack the broader assumptions and systems of knowledge creation that have been applied to the field. In particular, this chapter, as part of a broader exploration of critical security studies on social media, draws heavily on the critical approaches to terrorism offered by critical terrorism studies. it is thus important to undertake both a discussion of the critique of “classical” approaches on terrorism studies to understand the critique which emerges out of it and becomes central to critical terrorism studies. This critique of “classical” terrorism studies has roots in the growth of scholarship post-9/11 when a huge proliferation of courses, books and conferences on the subject emerging after 9/11 (Breen Smyth et al., 2008). This is not unique to 9/11 and a similar process follows large global events—for example the spate of terror attacks in France in the 2010s was followed by a raft of poor scholarship—most notably “The French Intifada” (Hussey, 2014). It is worth noting the key issues with this book as it shares many intellectual issues with previous iterations of terrorism research. Hussy makes the erroneous, and orientalist, assumption that France and Islam are inherently incompatible, even going as far as to depict a situation where France is “at war” with “its Arabs” (Hussey, 2014) in a vein similar to Huntingdon’s famous idea of a “clash of civilisations” (Huntingdon, 1993). Much scholarship of this type, drawing on a realist world view applied this time not to states as such but to “Muslims” or “Islam” more broadly has found significant purchase in popular discourse as well as with some in the security establishment (Orsi, 2018).

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These offer simplistic “us vs them” logics to an extremely complex, multifaceted and importantly in terms of discussions around Muslims in Europe very much an ultra-minority phenomena—(Khosrokhavar, 2014) with several orders of magnitude more French Muslims working in the state security forces than ever getting involved in violent radicalisation (Roy, 2015). The first port of call when considering the question of social media and critical approaches to security studies is quite obviously critical terrorism studies (Breen Smyth et al., 2008; Herring, 2008; Jackson et al., 2007). Bringing important nuances to this debate are the deconstructivist approach of CTS that offers particular insights into both the processes of how terrorism studies has been conducted, but also importantly normatively how it should be conducted. CTS emerged out of a well thought out critique of the empirical, conceptual and ontological weaknesses of conventional terrorism studies (inter alia Jackson, 2007; Jackson et al., 2007; Gunning, 2007; Jarvis, 2009). In particular, Burnett and Whyte (2005) present an important summary of many of the key arguments which evolve from this agenda and highlight key concerns around issues of terror “experts” who know little about the contexts in which they operate, have never met nor researched terrorists and are closely involved with state security approaches to terror from a “problem-solving” perspective (Jackson, 2007). Indeed, Jackson’s (2007) a observations that the emergence of the widespread term “Islamic terrorism” owes much to the assumptions that underpinned the orientalist scholarship on Islam and the Middle East that blossomed from the nineteenth century onwards. A key means is by which CTS seeks to fight back to adopt an overtly social constructivist stance vis-à-vis terror events (Jackson, 2007; Gunning, 2007; Jarvis, 2009). This offers some important opportunities to consider the question of social media and terrorism studies because constructivism dovetails well both with the broader critical security studies’ literature out of which CTS emerges, but also with the landscape of social media which is one of discourse and constructions—and discourse and constructions which are not only the realm of security elites but which are potentially the preserve of social media users. Within this an important nuance of constructivist approaches to terrorism is not to negate the empirically irrefutable violence involved in terror events—as not to obfuscate the objective deaths, suffering and horror of mass killings, but rather as a means to understand that the meanings rendered to such events are

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not objective. Thus, when users tweet #jesuischarlie in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, they are contributing in a myriad of ways to the labelling, construction and “meaning-making” layered on top of a factual and object set of violent acts. It is an important follow up to note a further critique of terrorism knowledge that stems from this social constructivist perspective. When it comes to knowledge creation about terror events, one is not dealing with ideologically neutral knowledge on an ideologically neutral subject (Burnett & Whyte, 2005), but rather one is embroiled in deeply political and ideological ground and as creators of knowledge scholars need to be aware of this. This has ramifications for social media because not only is scholarship underpinned with certain ideological and political assumptions about the nature of the world, but also are the way that individuals contribute to the construction of terrorism on social media. Continuing with the #jesuischarlie analogy, this layers on multiple ideological layers within this hashtag that take on a range of positions vis-à-vis this specific act of violence and its relationship to free speech, policing and French Republicanism more broadly (An et al., 2016; Titley et al., 2017). Thus, these are important concerns to bake into any particular study on social media constructions of terrorism to examine the positions taken and which particular themes from the broader social, political and ideological discourses in society are deployed in constructions of, and responses to, particular acts of violence. This is not to say, however, that CTS is without its criticism. The creation of good scholarship on terror is at all a simple and straightforward task. Sagemen (2014) makes a very pertinent observation in this regard that academics often suffer from an information deficit about terror events where intelligence agencies do not want to share information with academics. This is, however, only part of the story of such methodological and data issues. Many terrorists die in the conduct of violence, and thus are not available for post-facto interviews about their motivations, ideological rationale or connection to transnational networks. This is an important observation because social media has facilitated a greater contact, if only enabling some “digital” contact, between scholars and terrorists in the sense of the numerous studies that passively watch terrorists on social media platforms such as telegram (Davey & Weinberg, 2021; Prothero, 2019).

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Additionally, critical terrorism studies has been somewhat critiqued for constructing a “straw man” in its critique of the dominant state and security order and position of more “traditional” security scholars. Important in this is nuancing the claim that government actions are excluded from definitions of, or studies of, terrorism which is overstated in part because while not calling it terrorism security studies has a long history of examining the role states have played in deploying violence in the domestic arena (Lutz, 2010, p. 33). Thus, there is a failure to distinguish between “terrorism” and “terror” in the form of fear that is much more widely used by state and non-state (for example criminal) actors to achieve a range of goals (Lutz, 2010, p. 36). There are additionally boundary issues within the study of terrorism that undermine CTS. Much terrorism research occurs outside of the field in other disciplines, who may not want to be associated with “terrorism” research because of its negative connotations, and thus possibilities for understanding and cross-fertilisation are lost (Gunning, 2007, p. 237). This presents a problem with adopting the term terrorism as the central organising principle in the field (Gunning, 2007). On top of this, maintaining the term “terrorism” even if prefaced with “critical” risks re-enforcing knowledge privileges violence over other types of behaviour (Gunning, 2007, p. 238). It is also a problematic central organising principle for a field, as state and non-state actors move in and out of “terrorism” having very little else in common (Gunning, 2007, p. 239). The overt rejection of “problem-solving” also paradoxically creates a problem because it could exclude critical scholars from the important policymaking processes. Here, this necessitates posing an important question in “whether a ‘critical’ field should attempt to be policy-relevant or whether it should focus solely on power-knowledge issues” (Gunning, 2007, p. 238). This may not always be possible nor desirable, especially when considering the increasing “policy impact” focused world of academia where demonstrating some form of action in the policy world is increasingly important. The need for policy relevance creates tensions here between rejecting the problem-solving orientation of “classical” terrorism studies, while at the same time “CTS cannot remain policy-irrelevant without belying its emancipatory commitment” (Gunning, 2007, p. 240). To put it another way, what is the point of a body of work, built on critical theory which is extremely heavy on voicing obligations to better the position of the oppressed and perhaps aid in their “emancipation” if it

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then refuses to engage in policy relevance? However, “engaging” risks reenforcing power structures are the cause of said oppression in the first place. Additionally, as with many critical approaches to social sciences issues, critical terrorism studies runs into problems because of its commitment to an “emancipatory agenda”. Moving even beyond the more general problems with this—a naive utopianism, and the lack of a clear road map to operationalise emancipation, CTS, because of its operation often outside of Western contexts, has a tension between a universal emancipatory agenda and cultural and contextual sensitivity (Gunning, 2007). Many critical theory approaches make the case for the need for not only a slightly utopian and loosely defined global “emancipation”, but specifically argue for scholars and their research to play a central role in this. Critical terrorism studies is no exception, but in a similar vein to other critical approaches “precisely because a critically conceived field has an “emancipatory” agenda, it can end up imposing its particular normative agenda and so become just another (neo)-colonial project” (Gunning, 2007, p. 241). This is especially acute in a field where much of the scholarship is Islamist/Jihadist focused on Muslim majority contexts or on the Muslim diaspora and the clear links to orientalist understandings of the “problems” with Islam as a “barbaric” and “violent” religion, and the then logical emancipation being secularisation. Thus, there is a tension between the “notion of human security is deeply embedded in the secular and individualist perspective prevalent among Western (and Westernised) scholars” (Gunning, 2007, p. 241) and “their historical and cultural specificity—particularly when studying societies that place a greater value on community and religion”(Gunning, 2007, p. 241). There is also not a simple solution to many of these issues. Going beyond this CTS also offers some far broader observations about the nature of terrorism in a more applied and less abstract sense. There has been significant application of the CTS framework to questions of counter terrorism policy (Edwards, 2021; Martin, 2014; Qureshi, 2015) that have provided important insights into how policies and practices around terrorism have conceived of, and framed the Muslim community in Britian. A further and slightly more unexpected observation provided by CTS is regarding the ways in which terrorism has become more than the labelling of acts of violence, a research subject or a concept upon which to shape policy and security practice. Because “few dimensions of contemporary life remain untouched by its diffused

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effects” (Breen Smyth et al., 2008, p. 1), terrorism appears as a theme in many more aspects of human life. Of particular importance, terrorism has become a broader cultural phenomena, with books, movies comics and plays featuring a range of references to terrorism (Breen Smyth et al., 2008; Croft, 2006). Critical terrorism has made some progress in considering a “cultural” turn in terms of considering the broader ways by which terrorism has been constructed in popular culture—for example in the American TV “The West Wing”—remarkably producing a special episode within three weeks of the tragic events of September 2001. However, while potentially well intentioned, scholars have seen the resulting discourse problematic, and “actually relayed, amplified and reinforced the emerging dominant discourses of the Bush administration” (Holland, 2011, p. 85). This is not isolated to one example, with further TV shows taking on terrorism as a key theme (Erickson, 2008), as well as terrorism appearing in comic books as a key subject matter (Veloso & Bateman, 2013). Thus, there has been scant attention paid to the role that broader, non-security forms of culture, discourse and expression have been infiltrated by, and thus serve to subvert, notions of terrorism in the post-9/11 world. However, this has remained primarily concerned with these “top down” cultural products and not the broader means by which culture is mobilised and deployed in response to terrorism from below. Critical theory has found significant purchase in cultural studies, and critical security studies has made some limited forays into this broader question of culture and its role in international relations (Dodds, 2008; Doucet, 2005). This is interesting because if we are to know terrorism, and to understand it away from “problem-solving” equations of security policy and practice, these broader cultural appearances present important means by which terrorism is constructed in far more diffuse contexts than simply in policy. Conspicuous by its absence here is a mention of how this process also extends to social media. If “top down” aspects of culture, such as movies, comics and plays are important in questions of constructions of terrorism, then surely the rich seam of bottom-up perspectives provided by social media is important in this context. This does not mean that there is a lack of social media studies that relate to questions of terrorism. Social media is not only a relevant subject for understanding ISIS propaganda (Awan, 2017) and the “electronic jihad” (Rudner, 2017), but this has also included the discursive aspects through which ISIS fought a cyber war through the manipulation of text, images and videos in an extremely slick and professional manner

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(Awan, 2017). This is important as this cultivated a “glamorized and ‘cool’ image” where “Isis fighters are beginning to act as the new rock stars of global cyber jihad” (Awan, 2017, p. 138). Here the online sphere acts as “the virtual playground for extremist views to be reinforced and act as an echo chamber” (Awan, 2017, p. 138). However, even within this sub-field of social media and terrorism research, the current research on the topic was biased towards focusing on ISIS and ISIS propaganda (Gaikwad et al., 2021, p. 48,364). This is an important observation as clearly jihadism is an important online security concern, but far from the only one in the online sphere, given the prevalence of right wing and white nationalist activity on social media groups (Amarasingam et al., 2021; Conway et al., 2019). This chapter seeks to contribute here through offering some insights into the broader, and paradoxical, ways in which terrorism features in broader constructions of resistance to terrorism on social media. This contributes to a renewed discussion of the definition of terrorism. A central point of contestation that troubles this chapter deeply is the central concern within the field regarding the definition of terrorism itself. Some have argued for the benefit of a central definition of terrorism, while other scholars have argued that it is something that cannot be given a clear definition (Shanahan, 2016). Thus is “the word “terrorism” merely a matter of subjective preference and/or political expediency?” (Shanahan, 2016, p. 103). In short, the response to the age old question “is on another man’s freedom fighter?” as Boaz Ganor posits in the title of their article (Ganor, 2010) is likely unsettle-able at least in the context discussed here for two key reasons. Firstly, neither “terrorists”, counterinsurgency practitioners nor the general public are ever likely to agree a definition nor indeed consistently apply any definition, no matter how coherent, eloquent and intelligent it is. This is likely especially true of the relatively unregulated space of social media, as while terrorism content has become increasingly policed and censored (Prothero, 2019) there still exists significant room for contending definitions to exist. However, more importantly for a discussion of CTS and social media in this sense are the far more profound spaces not only for a multitude of definitions of terrorism in the formal sense to take place, but the plethora of ways in which terrorism, its events, symbols, actors can be subverted, redefined and contested in the space of social media. Indeed, this chapter aims to demonstrate that a range of symbols, narratives and themes are bought

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into the construction of terrorism on social media in quite unexpected and interesting ways.

4.3 Social Media, Terrorism and Local Themes of Resistance The rise of the Islamic state group in territories of Iraq and Syria gave a new impetus to international jihadism and it is within this context that two cases of resistance become important—one in France to a threat by ISIS to attack Marseille, and a case study in the wake of the ISIS attack on the Manchester Arena within the context of discourses regarding terrorism and Muslims in the UK. Like many groups before it, it took advantage of the weakness of two post-conflict states to establish a pseudo-state under its control (Byman, 2016b). While it has been argued that unlike al-Qaida before it, it does not overtly at least, seek to use this pseudo-state as a context to arm and train jihadists to bring down “the West” (Lister, 2015), this did not stop its imprint being embossed on the streets of Western cities through terror attacks claimed in its name. However, as with other international jihadist networks, it is important not to over-estimate its infrastructural power as a coherent network with clear command and control over all activities claimed in its name across the globe—many groups have sworn allegiance of ISIS (Byman, 2016a) but this does not mean that are part of a coherent network, a similar issue with anyone being able to “claim” an act of violence in the name of ISIS. However, it is this broader context of ISIS that unites the two case studies—in ISIS making a threat and the second of an actual ISIS attack on the Manchester Arena. The threat against Marseille occurs when, like groups before it, a range of media outputs emerge where ISIS made threats to targets, and in the aftermath of the Bastille Day attack in Nice in 2016, a Francophone jihadist, in a video issued online, made a direct threat of future attacks on Paris and Marseille (Véronique, 2016). The threat to Marseille was met with swift and wide-ranging resistance on social media. The second context of the Manchester bombing occurred 22 May 2017 when Salman Abedi, British of Libyan origin, detonated a bomb at the exit of the Manchester Arena after an Ariana Grande concert killing 22 and injuring 139. These are quite different events, but both are connected not only just by ISIS, but also by the broader discursive contexts around Islam, jihadism and terrorism.

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It is unfortunately neither particularly innovative, nor ground breaking to argue that Islam as a religion has been drawn extensively into the debate about terrorism, its causes, structures and consequences (Cesari, 2013; Eroukhmanoff, 2015; Hussey, 2014; Kepel & Jardin, 2017; Mavelli, 2013). It is important to highlight that such notions of group identity have been discussed as important loci around which securitisation can take place and which critical security studies has become concerned (Coskun, 2011; Hansen, 2012; Roe, 2004; Rumelili, 2013). The specifics of the two contexts covered here are important because they present some commonalities and some differences in terms of both the origins and status of Islamic minorities and their position within the broader public discourse. In France, Muslims are framed as “incomplete citizens” (Fredette, 2014), politicised and securitised long before jihadistinspired terrorism became a feature of the French landscape because of the politicisation of issues such as the headscarf (El Hamel, 2002) and the insecurity of French suburbs with large North and West African Muslim populations (Kepel, 2012). Muslims are a problem for a secular republic and society and thus require control and regulation (Samers, 2003). Thus, the threat made by the non-state actor that was resisted on social media was made into this broader historic context, as well as the more recent emergence of jihadist inspired attacks in France, such as Charlie Hebdo. The UK presents a slightly different context in that it is not a secular republic in the same sense and instead embraced policies of the recognition of minorities and state sponsored multiculturalism (and Modood T, 2009; Modood, 2006, 2010). This shifted in the wake of 9/11 with British Muslims repositioned as a security threat within discourses of counter terrorism as a “suspect community” requiring surveillance (Awan, 2017; Cherney & Murphy, 2016; Ragazzi, 2016). Within the UK context, this has resulted in two-thirds of media discourse regarding British Muslims as being a threat or a problem (Moore, 2008). Within this context, critical terrorism studies offers two insights into understanding resistance as a function of our broader understanding of terrorism. Firstly, there is the overtly constructivist approach—terrorism is not an objective fact but rather a construction. This opens up a broader discussion of who, how, where and when this construction can occur. Secondly, CTS in common with many critical approaches to security has an overtly “emancipatory” agenda that, while problematic, places emphasis on resistance and challenges dominant global power structures.

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These questions of resistance found some important applications in questions of bringing “the state” back in terrorism studies and consider how, where and when the state should be resisted (Blakeley, 2007). More empirically focused papers have seen applications of this idea of resistance to state terrorism in Latin America (Furtado, 2015), Islam and resistance in Palestine (Dunning, 2015) and Lebanese resistance to Israel (Aboultaif, 2016). What connects these studies is a concern with resistance to state actors, and resistance to non-state actors remains under-examined within the field. Additionally, this question of resistance is also situated very much within the material realms of security in these examples. Not only does the constructivist orientation of critical security studies open up opportunities for discursive forms of resistance to take place, but also it should be noted that options for material existence are not available to every actor in every security situation. Thus, it is important to consider how resistance to, and constructions of, terrorism can take a large number of different forms on social media. While it is established that what is said “online matters because it provides us with an insight into how elite-driven discourses are reproduced, legitimated and challenged” (Stanley & Jackson, 2016, p. 2), we must remain cautious to the extent that this disruption and challenge is possible or indeed translates into the “real” world. If we are to consider the forementioned issues with operationalising an “emancipatory agenda” both articulated by CSS (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Wyn Jones, 1999) and CTS (Gunning, 2007) in terms of broader structural equality within the international system, which social media has a rather paradoxical relationship with as a nexus of both emancipation and control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015), it is possible at least to say that social media in this sense provides a voice for the subversion and unsettling of dominant ideas about terrorism. Thus, discourse can, if even in limited ways, offer resistance to forms of power (Negm, 2015) and social media, again taking into account the limits discussed above that offer a place at least for the expression of “discourse of resistance” (Chiluwa, 2012). This importantly not only takes the form of contesting the state, its violence or its counter terrorism policies, but also in this case interesting is the broader context of the operation of a non-state actor. Within this, as social media remains unconstrained by the “serious” security concerns required by security elites seeking to convince an audience (Buzan et al., 1997), it is important to consider the different routes that this subversion and contestation of terrorism takes. An important

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aspect of the case analysed here is the “satirisation” of terrorism, the nonstate actor and the context in which it operates. This opens up a discussion of new ways in which social media enables terrorism to be constructed and resisted with reference to satirical politics. Thus, as satire is important in the depiction of established politics, it is also an important feature of the relationship of social media to politics and security as “part of the [political] game” (Žižek, 1989: 24). This has long roots which states that political humour is all persuasive and permeates many aspects of socio-political life (Coe, 2013). However, scholarship on political satire is dominant by concerns with established politics and institutions (Brassett, 2016; Kilby, 2018; Tang & Bhattacharya, 2011; Yang & Jiang, 2015). While lacking in a serious interrogating on what it means to resist non-state actors and non-established forms of politics online, this scholarship does establish that satire negotiates forms of powerless in politics and society in the face of state power (Tang & Bhattacharya, 2011; Yang & Jiang, 2015) that can even enfranchise those usually disengaged from politics in political discussions (Heiskanen, 2017). Thus, it is important to consider how social media can facilitate a space for resistance to non-state actors. The literature specifically on social media and satire opens up some important synergies that could offer synergies for a discussion of critical terrorism studies and social media. Satire and viral memes have become a lingua franca of contemporary society and politics (Brock, 2018: 284). This means paradoxically taking humour seriously and examining “what it can tell us about the political possibilities of a specific time or regime” (Brock, 2018; 284). This role of humour on social media has received often hyperbolic attention, with arguments made that jokes won Donald Trump the presidency as, not only was he as a political “elite” adept at using jokes from above, but also benefited from “an army of anonymous dirty-joke dispensers who helped put him in office” (Nussbaum, 2017, p. 1). While this is perhaps overly simplistic, ignoring the broader political and social context of the USA, it highlights the ability of the online sphere to be a place where even political humour becomes decentralised from established comedians and becomes something far more diffuse. Political satire has become more accessible both in consumption and production in the era of the social media meme—a “unit of popular culture” that is “circulated, imitated and transformed by internet users, creating a shared cultural experience” (Shifman, 2013). Thus, users are not passively consuming political humour, but are involved in the making

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of it (Burgess, 2008; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007; Shifman, 2013). Thus, internet political humour has moved “more the realm of “the people”— than narrow one-to-many modes of mediated communication’ (Milner, 2012; 236). When examining how Twitter responds to this threat of a non-state actors to the specific context of Marseille, it is interesting to see the dominant discursive repertoire deployed in this resistance being also from a non-state theme. This is not to make a casual connection that resistance to a non-state actor causes a mirror image of non-state forms of resistance, but rather to see that constructions of terror on social media bring in a range of tropes and idioms that demonstrate terror becoming embedded in the everyday (Breen Smyth et al., 2008). In this sense, it is thus logical that the resistance to terror also draws on local themes. Importantly, this has yet to be captured in the literature on social media responses to terrorism which have identified the role of more abstract concepts familiar to broader constructions of terrorism such as Islam’s place, or not, in the west and broader questions of freedom of speech and freedom of expression (An et al., 2016; Titley et al., 2017). Thus, the output here on Twitter raises an important example for questions of social media and international security. There is a nexus here of an intersection between these key themes of resistance to non-state actors, the satirisation of security articulated through urban identity. They add humour and satire to discussions of how local vectors of violence and insecurity are the key means through which ISIS can be resisted in the context of central state impotence. This brings into critical terrorism studies the broader discussions of how the rules of the political game are ridiculed which applies in security memes (Brock, 2018; Žižek, 1989). 4.3.1

Social Media, Re-Constructing Terrorism and Urban Identity

The resistant discourses vis-à-vis Marseille are interesting because they eschew perhaps more obvious and straight forward themes directing comments on terrorism, security or the city’s large Muslim population (Appendix 1). Discourses drawing on these ideas do exist, such as a Twitter user questioning the logic of ISIS attacks on the city: “Marseille is a city full of Muslims, why would ISIS threaten this city?”. This is an important, yet under-explored aspect of jihadist attacks in Europe in that they often include European Muslims as their victims, which at times becomes a feature of the social media discourse on terror attacks

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(Downing, 2019). However, as social media is an arena where discourses are open for re-making, cross-pollenating and subversion, the discourses can be far more varied and paradoxical in the themes which they utilise to discuss terrorism. This resistance in the everyday presents a quite paradoxical take on violence and security because primacy is placed on the ability of nonstate actors connected to Marseille’s crime and violence as those who can resist the ISIS threat to the city. This draws on a much larger and well-developed trope about the city itself being violent with significant embedded organised crime networks (Mah, 2014; Viard, 1995). Conceptually, however, it is important that this presents how deploying the language and knowledge of disciplines such as sociology is important in this process—in line with the broader assumptions of the Paris school that argues both against disciplinary hierarchies and for the inclusion of disciplines such as sociology and criminology (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This is important because there is a sense that these disciplinary hierarchies are “Hiding the struggles and hierarchies inside these discursive activities” (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 5), where sociology and criminology and themes of the local are seen as inferior in international relations and security to the broader concerns of the great power struggles between states. However, examining satire and social media in a security context opens up the opportunity to situate these sociological concerns more centrally as questions in international relations. Thus, here the previously sociological and geographical concerns of the urban local being a key place constituted by history, government, practices of governments and social relations (Lynch, 1960; Westwood, 1987; Donald, 1992) can contribute to understanding how these are also important in making sense of the increasingly complex context of international security. Equally, this literature on the local neither takes into account how themes or urban identity can be co-opted and deployed as a form of satirical resistance to non-state actors such as terrorists. A user-generated meme, by a user whose biography states that they live in Marseille, adopts the image of the city’s church spire which has a statue of the Mary. In the image, it shows the Virgin holding a Kalashnikov captioned with “ISIS, we are ready to welcome you!”. There are several layers to this as on the surface the inclusion of the Kalashnikov can be seen as the incorporation of a general theme of security into the symbolism of the city. However, it goes deeper than this because Marseille has a particular association with the Kalashnikov assault rifle, being used

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extensively in the gangland killings in the city (Pujol, 2014, 2016). Thus, resistance is structured here using local themes both of the city as physical structure, but also as the city as social system of crime and violence integrated together. Thus, terrorism, and the threat of it, is subverted and twisted using a complex interplay of themes. This continues with further comments that connect the two aspects of Marseille together. An example of this is a particular tweet arguing that “ISIS threatens Marseille. I don’t think they know that in the Northern Quarters of Marseille there are more Kalashnikovs than in the whole of Syria”. Here the same symbol of the Kalashnikov is used. However, this comment also connects this geographically not to the physical city as a landmark, but to the physical city as a particular area that is marked by crime, violence and crime as the poor housing estates of the North of Marseille is where the drug trafficking, and the use of the Kalashnikov, is concentrated (Pujol, 2014, 2016). The construction of terrorism online is thus far more complex, paradoxical and unexpected than simply discussions of violence or the reproduction of dominant discourses around Muslims in European society. Rather, it can draw on themes that on first glance have no relationship to the terrorism event at hand at all. The Twitter response to the Manchester bombing lacks a mention of crime and violence in the local context. However, it does not mean that themes of the urban context are absent as a reference point to discussions of terrorism in this specific moment. A key conversation emerged in the wake of the Manchester bombing that draws on the broader context to express the sentiment that “blaming Muslims for this is an insult to all the Muslim taxi drivers, doctors, police officers who were saving lives last night” (Appendix 2). This is a direct attempt to resist the dominant discourses around Muslims as suspect communities and vectors of insecurity in the UK, but in the specific context of Manchester that has a high Muslim population. These acts of kindness by Muslims in the light of the attack gained national media attention (Revesz, 2017). Thus, here terrorism becomes constructed in the context of local activities and local themes, which require critical terrorism studies, and critical security studies more generally to consider the complex interplay of the local context in international security. This is a comment by several users, and thus has slightly different implications depending on which users express this sentiment and how their relationship to their followers is structured.

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Social Media, Terrorism and Football Resistance

This role of the local context is not limited to the city as such, its physical spaces or its population. In both the Marseille and Manchester contexts, sport plays important, if different, roles in resistance to, and subversion of, terrorism discourses on social media. Much has been written about football as a key battleground of political concerns, both those global in scope (Tomlinson & Young, 2006), but also the micro-politics of life and the everyday decisions individuals are required to make (Power et al., 2020). The relationship between club, place and identity is not static as it may seem but dynamic (Shobe, 2008), and the import of paradigms of organisation from the world of football into politics (Porro & Russo, 2000). The literature on football and security is more limited to football hooligans (Armstrong & Harris, 1991) or the impact of attempt terror attacks on security at stadiums (Cleland & Cashmore, 2018). The little attention paid in this context situate football and football fans as vectors of anti-Muslim action and hatred (Garland & Treadwell, 2010). However, both of these contexts demonstrates a countervailing logic in the constructions of insecurity in that football, and local teams, can act as important nexuses of resistance to terrorism in quite different ways. Importantly, neither features the aspects of Islamophobic discourses previously discussed (Garland & Treadwell, 2010). In the Marseille case, this draws heavily on the local team, Olympique de Marseille, in different ways. Firstly, the team, its symbols and the songs sung at matches are used as a rallying cry to resist ISIS attacks on the city, with Twitter users tweeting an adapted football song to express the sentiment that they would beat ISIS. This situates the football club itself as an important symbolic resource that can be drawn upon as a means of resistance. Further comments on the football team satirise both the threat to Marseille, but also the social media resistance to it by highlighting the poor performance of the team and how if the football team cannot win, how can the city resist an transnational terrorist network? Other users go further by more overtly mixing footballs and more obvious securityrelated themes. A user comments ““In Marseille there are Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers” but their results in league 1 are disappointing”. This mixes themes about the crime and violence of the city (Mah, 2014; Viard, 1995, 2014) seen in the theme above with football. Thus, it is not just that the symbols and discourses of the local football team are deployed as a means to resist ISIS but that they also form part of a much

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broader and more far reaching discussion about the terrorism, but also that connects the football club to the broader context of the city and its violence. Thus, football does not always sit above the broader everyday politics of the city when deployed as a means of resistance. In the case of Manchester, a quite different mechanism plays out in the mix of football and security. Here football comes into resistance to discourses of terrorism through the actions of a fan organisation account. Here, an established fan account tweets about the bombing “A message to those abusing Muslims for what’s happened at the Manchester Arena, many of the taxi drivers offering free lifts are Muslim.” (Appendix 3). This refers back to the story that features in the previous theme of drawing on urban identity of the city. However, because it is tweeted by a fan organisation directly connected with Manchester united, football plays a role here not as a set of symbols and discourses that can be deployed in resistance to terrorism online, but rather how fan organisations can become influential and important in resisting dominant discourses of terrorism as a problem which stems from either the community of British Muslims, nor the religion itself, but is rather something else and that Muslims in Manchester are also involved in helping in the aftermath of an attack. This demonstrates an important countervailing logic to British football fans being associated with islamophobia and promoting the English Défense League’s positions on the problematic nature of the Muslim presence in the UK (Garland & Treadwell, 2010).

4.4 Conclusions on Social Media and Terrorism in the Digital Age This chapter set out to contribute to the literature on terrorism and social media. There exists a literature that seeks to understand this from the perspective of the extensive use of such technologies by jihadists under the banner of the so-called Islamic State group (Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019) and right wing extremists (Davey & Weinberg, 2021). However, taking the perspective of critical terrorism studies that seeks to conceptualise terrorism as a social construct (Gunning, 2007; Herring, 2008; Jackson et al., 2007) opens up a broader range of possibilities for terrorism to be constructed on social media. Indeed, critical terrorism has made some important inroads into this process, especially with considering the leaching of “terrorism” into many aspects of daily life (Breen

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Smyth et al., 2008). Of particular interest from the constructivist perspective for social media are the observations that terrorism has become the subject of a range of popular culture products, including TV shows (Erickson, 2008; Holland, 2011) and comic books (Veloso & Bateman, 2013). Thus, terrorism becomes a broader cultural artefact that blends in with a range of other themes and questions that go far beyond the obvious questions of counter terrorism. This chapter sought to push this discussion further by considering how resistance to terrorism discourses on social media incorporates, subverts and satirises terrorism in cross-pollination with cultural themes. Of particular importance are the range of themes from the local context that emerge as important in social media discourses. This furthers claims that have been made in critical security studies about the importance of sociological knowledge and theories into questions of security (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). International relations, security studies and indeed critical terrorism studies currently lack this, and given that terrorism takes place within, and is mediated through, particular spatial, geographical and cultural contexts more work is required to understand the range of processes that this takes. The two examples used here of Twitter responses to a threat to attack Marseille, and in the wake of the Manchester bombings both offers insights into the range of various ways the local context can play a role in constructions of terrorism, and indeed a role in resisting discourses of terrorism. In the case of Marseille, city landmarks, as well as the crime and violence within the city, were themes used by social media users to resist the ISIS threat to the city. In Manchester, a different process occurred where social media users used the local context, its Muslim residents and their acts of kindness in the aftermath of the bombing to resist narratives around Muslims in the UK being synonymous with terrorism. Interesting, in both context sport, and in particular football, featured in different ways in these discourses of resistance. In Marseille, as well as the themes of the local city landmarks and crime being subverted, so were the themes and discussions of the local football team. In Manchester, the team’s symbols were not used per se, but a team fan account on Twitter was central in spreading narratives about Muslims being important in helping in the aftermath of the attack. Thus, while there is literature on sport in politics and IR (Armstrong & Harris, 1991; Porro & Russo, 2000; Shobe, 2008), little literature exists on football and security. The

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literature that does exist highlights the problematic discourse some football fans have towards Islam and terrorism, for example the EDL and the Taliban in the UK (Garland & Treadwell, 2010). This existing literature thus does not give room for football to play broader rolls in terror events and specifically the discussions of the position of Muslims within them. This is not to say that football and terrorism should become a new “subdiscipline” within IR, but rather that when social media is concerned, more work is required to open the field and consider the far broader range of themes, discourses and symbols that are melded with, subvert and indeed go onto construct understandings of security on social media. This will only become more diverse, and indeed important, as social media platforms themselves continue to mushroom in both type and popularity.

Appendices Appendix 1 Codebook and results of the coding of Tweets collected under the keyword search “daesh” “Marseille” that generated 122,009 single tweet units. Category:

Description:

Tally (%):

Non-relevant

Does not address event or security threat (e.g. adverts, weather, fast food, etc.) Reference to the city being characterised by crime and/or violence and/or drugs trade and/or arms proliferation Uses symbols/figures/players of the football team “Olympique de Marseille” Reference to the city’s multiculturalism and/or Muslim and/or migrant population Refers to the city’s traffic and/or road infrastructure and/or driving style Refers to the music/film/television series concerned with and/or from, Marseille Refers to the city without fitting into other categories Simple, value neutral re-tweeting of video

N/A

Crime

Football Multiculturalism Traffic Media and popular culture Another city related theme Descriptive

58

5 4 2 1 1 29

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Appendix 2 Analysis of the Twitter feed and response of the account that tweeted ““blaming Muslims for this is an insult to all the Muslim taxi drivers, doctors, police officers who were saving lives last night” collected under the keywords “Manchester” and “Muslims” as part of a 187,000 tweet data set. Code: Emily Total Sample: Sentiment Agree: Islam/Muslim non-violent

Simple Agreement Nuancing terror and identity Media distortion Mourning

Sentiment Disagree: Muslims are terrorists

Islamic religion inherently violent Simple disagreement Mourning

Anti-immigration

Sentiment Neutral:

Explanation:

Use of Islamic doctrine or examples to show Islam/Muslims not violent “I agree” Examples of white/Christian or other religion terrorism Media to blame for negative image of Muslims Agree but mourning victims more important than discussion In part of full Muslims are terrorist even if an extreme element Reference to specific scripture or general sentiment “I disagree” Disagree but mourning victims more important than discussion Stopping immigration would solve problem of terrorism

Tweet Tally:

%

298 128 58

100% 45% of total 46%

38 25

30% 20%

3

2%

3

2%

108 53

36% of total 49%

28

26%

13 11

12% 10%

2

2%

113

19% of total

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Appendix 3 Analysis of the Twitter feed and response of the Manchester United fan account collected under the keywords “Manchester” and “Muslims” as part of a 187,000 tweet data set. Code: ManUtdWay Total Sample: Sentiment Agree: Simple Agreement Islam/Muslim non-violent

Nuancing terror and identity Sentiment Disagree: Muslims are terrorists

Simple disagreement Islamic religion inherently violent Mourning

Anti-immigration

Explanation:

“I agree” Use of Islamic doctrine or examples to show Islam/Muslims not violent Examples of white/Christian or other religion terrorism In part of full Muslims are terrorist even if an extreme element “I disagree” Reference to specific scripture or general sentiment Disagree but mourning victims more important than discussion Stopping immigration would solve problem of terrorism

Sentiment Neutral:

Tweet Tally:

%

57 20 14 5

100% 53% of total 52% 18%

11

18%

15 8

26% of total 53%

3 1

26% 7%

1

7%

1

7%

12

21% of total

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Cherney, A., & Murphy, K. (2016). Being a ‘suspect community’ in a post 9/11 world—The impact of the war on terror on Muslim communities in Australia. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 49(4), 480–496. Chiluwa, I. (2012). Social media networks and the discourse of resistance: A sociolinguistic CDA of ‘Biafra’ online discourses. Discourse & Society, 23(3), 217–244. Cleland, J., & Cashmore, E. (2018). Nothing will be the same again after the Stade de France Attack: Reflections of association football fans on terrorism, security and surveillance. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 42(6), 454–469. Coe, J. (2013, July 18). ‘Sinking Giggling into the Sea’. London Review of Books. Conway, M. et al. (2019). Right-Wing Extremists’ Persistent online presence: History and contemporary trends. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep19623 (Accessed 26 May 2022). Coskun, B. B. (2011). Analysing desecuritisation: The case of the israelipalestinian peace education and water management. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Analysing-Desecuritisation-IsraeliPalestinian-Education-Management/dp/1443827312 (Accessed 1 October 2018). Council of Councils (2021). The 9/11 Effect and the transformation of global security|Council of Councils. https://www.cfr.org/councilofcou ncils/global-memos/911-effect-and-transformation-global-security (Accessed 20 July 2022). Croft, S. (2006). Google-Books-ID: cc2AXjf3Zq0C. Culture, crisis and America’s war on terror. Cambridge University Press. Davey, J. & Weinberg, D. (2021). Inspiration and influence: Discussions of the US Military in extreme right-wing Telegram Channels. p. 20. Dencik, L. & Leistert, O. (2015). Google-Books-ID: iOHaDwAAQBAJ. Critical perspectives on social media and protest: Between control and emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield. Dodds, K. (2008) ‘Have you seen any good films lately?’ Geopolitics, international relations and film—Dodds—2008—Geography compass—Wiley Online Library. Geography Compass. https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00092.x?casa_token=KIJIAyeG_ ocAAAAA%3A18w4gRpKggxmzVvdR1BsxfkqlQvn5bDSmdOIveoWY8VuBh 1cQNf0xN6w1dXWOSCt3Nlp6wLpmU6os0k (Accessed 26 July 2022). Donald, J. (1992). ‘Metropolis: The City as Text in Bocock’, in Polity Press. Doucet, M. G. (2005). Child’s play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children’s films. Global Society, 19(3), 289–306. Downing, J. (2019). Blurring European and Islamic values or brightening the good—bad Muslim dichotomy? A critical analysis of French Muslim victims of

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Jihadi terror online on twitter and in Le Monde newspaper. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(2), 250–272. Dunning, T. (2015). Islam and resistance: Hamas, ideology and Islamic values in Palestine. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8(2), 284–305. Edwards, P. (2021). Surveillance, safeguarding and beyond: The prevent duty and resilient citizenship. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(1), 47–66. El Hamel, C. (2002). Muslim diaspora in Western Europe: The Islamic Headscarf (Hijab), the media and muslims’ integration in France. Citizenship Studies, 6(3), 293–308. van Eldik, A. K. et al. (2019). Urban influencers: An analysis of urban identity in YouTube content of local social media influencers in a super-diverse city. Frontiers in Psychology. 10. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/https://doi. org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02876 (Accessed 22 July 2022). Erickson, C. W. (2008). Thematics of counterterrorism: Comparing 24 and MI5/Spooks. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(3), 343–358. Eroukhmanoff,. (2015). The remote securitisation of Islam in the US post9/11: Euphemisation, metaphors and the “logic of expected consequences” in counter-radicalisation discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8(2), 246–265. Faure Walker, R. (2019). The UK’s prevent counter-terrorism strategy appears to promote rather than prevent violence. Journal of Critical Realism, 18(5), 487–512. Fredette, J. (2014). Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, public identity, and the politics of citizenship. Temple University Press. https://www.amazon. co.uk/Constructing-Muslims-France-Discourse-Citizenship-ebook/dp/B00 HSFS6V0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538397208&sr=8-1&keywords=Mus lims+in+France+%E2%80%93+Discourse%2C+Public+Identity%2C+and+the+ Politics+of+Citizenship (Accessed 1 October 2018). Furtado, H. T. (2015). Against state terror: Lessons on memory, counterterrorism and resistance from the Global South. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8(1), 72–89. Gaikwad, M. et al. (2021). Online extremism detection: A systematic literature review with emphasis on datasets, classification techniques, validation methods, and tools. IEEE Access. 948364–48404. Ganor, B. (2010). Defining terrorism: Is one man’s terrorist another man’s freedom fighter? 19. Garland, J., & Treadwell, J. (2010). ‘“No Surrender to the Taliban”: Football Hooliganism. Islamophobia and the rise of the english defence league’, in Papers from the British Criminology Conference., 2010, 19–35. Gunning, J. (2007). Babies and bathwaters: Reflecting on the pitfalls of critical terrorism studies. European Political Science, 6(3), 236–243.

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CHAPTER 5

Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age

The first example is the use of YouTube to create and disseminate a contestation of an ISIS terror threat from below. This contributes to the vernacular literature that until now has primarily been concerned with how voices from below contest state security and not non-state actors (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019). As critical security studies has increasingly worked to examine non-state actors as important in the global security debates, this has yet to sufficiently enter the vernacular studies literature. In addition, while the vernacular security literature has examined voices from below through ethnographic (Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009) and qualitative focus group methodologies (Jarvis, 2019), it has yet to get to grips with social media as a key means to examine the idioms and forms of expression “from below” which is surprising given the almost infinite range of voices from below on an almost infinite number of security-related issues in the wider global system. The second example seeks to contribute to the vernacular security literature from a different angle by examining how on social media voice from below work to foster insecurity rather than contest pre-existing security narratives. Vernacular security studies has been concerned with how voices from below have contested security narratives from below, imposed from above by the state (Bubandt, 2005; Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017). However, it is yet to be applied to how vernacular voices from below articulate narratives in their idioms and forms of expression to actually create insecurity, nor do this on social media. This chapter builds a study © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_5

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based on the netnographic method to track criminal activity on the app Snapchat. Within this are also new ideas for the vernacular security studies literature in the discussion of the netnographic method as a key means through which to approach and understand online narratives. While there have been some studies of social media and security, there is a lack in this niche, as there is in social media studies more generally, on attention to the “new” generation of app-based social media platforms specifically developed for, and only able to be used on, smartphone apps. This is especially important in the Snapchat context, as the use of ethnography enables the capturing of security narratives from a platform which explicitly sets out to be untraceable, with ephemeral “self-destructing” data (Bayer et al., 2016).

5.1

Introducing Social Media and Vernacular Approaches to Security in the Digital Age

Perhaps one of the most overstated aspects of social media has been the idea that the proliferation of new media technology would herald a new era of political activism, agitation and change from below. The idea goes that social media allows unheralded opportunities for communication that would enable mobilisation and change. This comes somewhat from the early optimism around the proliferation of the internet and new media and its ability to facilitate these kinds of communication changes (Persily & Tucker, 2020). While it is important to be guarded about these claims, given that there is a significant wave of countervailing research, social media has given a range of individuals new opportunities and possibilities of self-expression on a number of issues, even if this has not resulted in the creation of a utopia. Thus, while this book is not claiming that social media platforms provide radical emancipatory opportunities, they do provide a kind of, albeit thin, discursive emancipation where in a messy, unpredictable and often ephemeral way, individuals can become influential and important in security debates. Again, this is far from the somewhat vague notions of radical emancipation that critical security studies aims for (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Wyn Jones, 1999), but it is possible to see a “discursive emancipation” across a range of themes when examining social media from a critical security perspective. Thus considering the means by which social media has enabled individuals to voice their opinions and feelings on a range of concerns clearly has important implications for security more broadly. Thus, it is important

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for this chapter to balance the paradox presented by social media when suggesting important nexuses of security speak that complicates ongoing discussions within critical security studies of where security studies takes place. Social media is often described as the international public sphere, where actors from across the globe can take part in the debate. However, this chapter seeks to nuance and complicate these understandings by opening discussions on how local themes of place, space, territory and urban forms of identity are integrally linked to discussions of security and feature largely in security speak on social media. This understanding of vernacular security speak on social media is aided greatly by the overt position of vernacular security studies of a theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This “allows for greater fidelity to the diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This is important when considering a key mission of the critical turn in security studies is to increase the range of “what counts for research” (Aradau et al., 2015). Thus rather than schools of critical security thought such as the Copenhagen school which begin with the assumption of the primacy of elite discourses of security (Buzan, Waever et al., 1997), this approach enables a far greater range of security speech to be captured and analysed. Thus, this allows for truly inductive insights into public experiences, understandings and anxieties about security (Jarvis, 2019) and indeed adding to this the means by which these understandings and anxieties. This is where this chapter needs to bring in a range of literature and concepts to highlight the ability of vernacular security studies to account for the range of unexpected and paradoxical ways that security speak are expressed on social media. This is important for forging ahead with the many voices that have advocated the increased use of sociological and anthropological tools in the understanding of global security (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This is because if we are to take seriously a vernacular turn in security studies, in addition to adequately conceptualising the expressions of vernacular security on social media platforms, we must have appropriate conceptual tools to integrate the many ways security is subverted, challenged and articulated in a vernacular sense. This also is likely to happen from paradoxical and seemingly irrelevant angles that have no immediate and obvious relationship to security because they are cultural and social idioms plucked out of the everyday experiences and environments of those whom security concerns are not only lived with locally, but for whom security issues are only one of many other facets of their daily experiences.

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For the particular examples included in this chapter, which are no means exhaustive but merely a foray into what is a far larger and more diverse field, conceptualising security requires an interdisciplinary approach. In particular, questions of local identities, place and space as questions of, and indeed sites of, discourse are important. This is because, by its very nature of being “vernacular”, vernacular security discourses on social media are expressed within the idioms of the national, international and the local. This would be an interdisciplinary and novel engagement with literatures on urban space and place (Dikeç, 2007; Mah, 2014) that have thus far been neglected and under-utilised by critical security studies. In particular, this will consider how local, territorial questions of identifications have implications for how security threats are constructed and established, but also how they offer opportunities for symbolic resistance. The first example is the use of YouTube to create and disseminate a contestation of an ISIS terror threat from below. Vernacular security studies has developed a literature that is concerned with contesting state created and driven notions of threat and security policy (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019). However, the example presented here is about the contestation of narratives of security threats generated by non-state actors, in this case a terrorist network. This is important, as critical security studies has increasingly worked to examine non-state actors as important in the global security debates, this has yet to sufficiently enter the vernacular studies literature. In addition, while the vernacular security literature has examined voices from below through ethnographic (Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009) and qualitative focus group methodologies (Jarvis, 2019), it has yet to get to grips with social media as a key means to examine the idioms and forms of expression “from below” which is surprising given the almost infinite range of voices from below on an almost infinite number of security related issues in the wider global system. The second example seeks to contribute to the vernacular security literature from a different angle and perspective entirely. Vernacular security studies has been concerned with how voices from below have contested security narratives from below, imposed from above by the state (Bubandt, 2005; Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017). However, it is yet to be applied to how vernacular voices from below articulate narratives in their idioms and forms of expression to actually create insecurity, nor do this on social media. This chapter builds a study based on the netnographic method to track criminal activity on the app Snapchat. Within this are also new ideas for the vernacular security studies literature in the

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discussion of the netnographic method as a key means through which to approach and understand online narratives. While there have been some studies of social media and security, there is a lack in this niche, as there is in social media studies more generally, on attention to the “new” generation of app based social media platforms specifically developed for, and only able to be used on, smartphone apps. This is especially important in the Snapchat context, as the use of ethnography enables the capturing of security narratives from a platform which explicitly sets out to be untraceable, with ephemeral “self-destructing” data (Bayer et al., 2016).

5.2 Conceptualising Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age This chapter seeks to begin to consider in more depth not only the specifics of vernacular constructions of security, but also to do this within the social media context. This is important because the excellent and fascinating work done on advancing a vernacular security studies agenda in recent years (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) is very much at the embryonic stage. As already mentioned, it is quite overt about this and its theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) which is both admirably lacking in pretension, and also extremely helpful for scholars who seek to contribute to this body of knowledge. This is important because it facilitates the insertion of a number of non-international relations tools and concepts into the discussions of vernacular security to be undertaken here, and thus aiding in further broadening (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) the discipline. Additionally, there is the task of also intervening within these discussions about the specifics of the social media context as it is important to acknowledge and consider the quite specific context in which these vernacular articulations of security are taking place. We also have to be cautious here because of a number of both normative commitments made by critical security studies, and indeed empirical assertions made about, “voices from below” and their relationship to new media technologies. Indeed, the Welsh and Paris schools of security studies (Bigo, 2008; Wyn Jones, 1999) have made important claims about the emancipation burden that critical understandings of security studies should shoulder. This has been further strengthened by claims that without the emancipatory dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013), and indeed that

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critical security studies can and indeed should offer “universality” and “recognition”, emancipatory agendas (Aradau, 2004). Thus in the light of both considering security from below through the combined lenses of a critical vernacular agenda and democratised communications technologies (social media), surely this should be ripe ground for emancipatory opportunities. Sadly, this is far from the case and beyond being able to make somewhat vague claims about certain degrees of discursive emancipation brought about by the ability to voice opinions about security, their remains little here in terms of actual material emancipation (Dencik & Leistert, 2015; Leistert, 2015). This is broadly in line with the scholarship on social media which has performed an extremely pronounced “volte face” regarding the emancipatory potential of communications technology and the internet. The early days were marked by genuine optimism about the communications revolution and the ability of new emancipatory ideas to emerge, spread, flourish and challenge oppression and autocracy (Persily & Tucker, 2020). However, more recent insights have demonstrated that at times emancipatory movements drove social media traffic and not the other way around as often stated (Wolfsfeld et al., 2013) but also that the internet and communications media can also be used to further subjugate (Persily & Tucker, 2020). However, there also needs to be further nuances made about the topography of the social media landscape because it is simply to assume that it is “flat” when it is in fact deeply hierarchical and where these hierarchies are in a constant process of undulation and reconstruction. Thus, we need to avoid thinking of social media as the place of even equal discursive emancipation, because while all social media users are equal, some are more equal than others for a number of important reasons. However, perhaps all is not lost. While social media cannot magically materially nor politically emancipate the oppressed, it can in fact give them voice. If a key part of both critical security studies (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Wyn Jones, 1999) and decolonial approaches to global security (Adamson, 2020) is to give voice to the voiceless and to diversify the range of approaches and viewpoints represented on a particular issue, social media in fact does do this on security issues. No, this is not the utopian panacea that brings down authoritarian regimes or dismantles global exploitation, but it is something in that voices can emerge on security issues that would not previously have been able to express a vernacular view from below on particular security issues, let alone broadcast these to the wider outside world. However, as this chapter will demonstrate, even

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this is something that is multifaceted and can have negative implications for the creation of certain kinds of insecurity, namely here the use of apps by criminals to foster forms of insecurity. With this said it is important to dip a little deeper into the literature on vernacular security studies to contextualise the discussions to come in this chapter. The “vernacular” turn in security (Jarvis & Lister, 2012; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016) conceptualises the ways in which security is constructed in everyday terms. Security has become an increasingly important part of daily social practices through developments such as a data collection and CCTV operation (Huysmans, 2011) which is immersing the individual in near constant engagement with security broadly defined. The idea of the “speech act” so central to the Copenhagen school requires re-balancing away from the linguistic turns of focus on “speech” towards everyday “acts” that embed security in the daily (Huysmans, 2011). The focus here on emergent technologies dovetails with this paper’s concern with the opportunities presented by social media that go the other way in allowing individuals to challenge and subvert their immersion in security. Thus, technology is not simply something which surveys and monitors the individual, but also democratises the ability to subvert, re-make and challenge dominant narratives and constructions of security. Coming without set conceptions of what security is or indeed should be, provides vernacular security studies with a theoretical “emptiness” that allows for truly inductive insights into public experiences, understandings and anxieties about security (Jarvis, 2019). Security is practiced in different ways in different places, requiring context specific understanding of idioms of uncertainty and fear about global, national and/or local security concerns (Bubandt, 2005). Thus, vernacular security prioritises the stories of those marginalised in the account of global politics and seeks to understand how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017). Currently underexamined within this burgeoning literature are how new forms of media technologies allow security speak to take place through multimodal, multi-media outputs. The vernacular approach has found a range of applications outside questions of social media, however, which are important for the examples presented here. One of the earlier works on vernacular security studies took the example of Indonesia, and examined the interplay between state institutions, state policies and rules, and how they are implemented at

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the local level in Indonesia (Bubandt, 2005). This demonstrated that the “statist idea of security encountered local universes containing ontological notions of safety and uncertainty that often accommodated and undermined” (Bubandt, 2005, p. 276) state rules. Thus, the key aspects here are the connections between the global, national and the local, and it is thus important to consider when looking at vernacular voices from below that the “below” is neither discrete nor should be the only level of concern. Thus those being secured perceive and respond to being “secured” in different ways (Luckham, 2017), and in this case we will examine a means by which they respond to being “insecured”. Vernacular security studies has made use of focus group research to ascertain how citizens construct security threats and to what extent they are aware of, or engage with, government efforts to foster vigilance and suspicion in public places (Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016). Here “the capacity of certain forms of non-elite knowledge to challenge to dominant framework” (Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016, p. 42), in this case the “policy logic” of the British conservative/liberal democrat coalition government, “excluding the political subject of threat and (in)security” (Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016, p. 42). Focus groups have not been the only methods used to examine vernacular security as ethnographies have also been utilised (Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009). The use of ethnographic methods to gain intersubjective insights into the differing understandings of threat and insecurity between public and political discourses and voices from below has found significant purchase in the context of vernacular security studies. Similar efforts have been made to understand the tensions between democracy, representation and security in post 9/11 Britain by examining security discourses “from below” (Giles & Ben, 2008). Vernacular security as a concept has also been applied to question of state-society relations in the context of the development and security nexus in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, to highlight the importance of bringing local voices and concerns into security and development (Makki & Tahir, 2021), vernacular understandings of violence in Africa (Hultin, 2010) and also found resonance in discussing feminist critiques of security and the policing of “conjugal order” (George, 2017). Here, it was the vernacular norms and values of the society which influenced the implementation of security practices in Fiji (George, 2017).

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5.3 Investigating Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age This chapter presents two examples of vernacular security that aim to contribute to the vernacular turn by bringing two very different social media platforms that require two very different methodological approaches, to demonstrate two very different means by which individuals use social media to create vernacular narratives about security and insecurity. The first draws on questions of terrorism and security and the contestation of a terror threat with a YouTube video. This seeks to push vernacular security studies, which to date has mainly situated the state, and in particular state policies and regulations as the aspect of the security landscape that individuals are responding to when articulating vernacular narratives of security (Bubandt, 2005; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016). Vernacular security studies has methodologically also mainly relied on focus groups (Jarvis & Lister, 2012) or ethnographic practices (Bubandt, 2005) and has yet to fully realise the potential that social media technologies have for examining vernacular insights into security questions. The examples here present something quite different in that both look to non-state aspects of security as the key questions through which vernacular security narratives are constructed in the first case against a non-state actors in the form of a threat from an international terrorist network, and secondly as a means to pursue criminal activity. Thus, this demonstrates that the state does not have to be the key focus of vernacular security discussions. 5.3.1

Social Media and Vernacular Resistance to Non-State Actors on YouTube

This first example presented here will examine YouTube as a source of vernacular security speak. YouTube has become one of the largest websites for hosting user generated content and YouTube has generated scholarship across a wide range of themes, spawning somewhat of a “sub-discipline” of YouTube research (Snelson, 2011). The platform has received attention for being an important site for the development and sharing of viral videos, sometimes for instrumental purposes (Burgess, 2008). This has included viral “meme” campaigns with social and political relevance, such as the spreading of a series of LGBT memes and solace

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given to young users (Gall et al., 2015). The platform has also been used by non-profit agencies as a vector to foster democracy (Auger, 2013). From a more specifically security perspective, YouTube has been labelled as the “great radicaliser” (Tufekci, 2018). Here, the user argued that algorithms directed the user to extreme content on both the left and right (Tufekci, 2018). However, with the lack of a systematic methodology, and also owing to the rather simplistic nature of the conclusion, that YouTube is a “great radicaliser”, scholars should approach this with caution. As with many aspects of social media and security, simplistic and alarmist explanations and assertions are common but social media is rarely, if ever, something that gives simplistic, predictable and uni-directional outputs. This said, however, there is no doubt that YouTube has been an important vector of extremist content. YouTube has been highlighted as a place where anti-semitic conspiracy theorists flourish (Allington & Joshi, 2020; Allington et al., 2021). This has also been established with regards to other problematic content, where the online sphere has come under scrutiny for being a place where terrorism, radical beliefs and political violence are promoted, and YouTube is no exception in this (Dean & Bell, 2012). Here the dynamics are interesting as it demonstrates the importance of platform migration for extremist movements. Extremists moved from closed community websites to mainstream social network platforms like YouTube (Klausen et al., 2012). Here members of the now banned British jihadist group “Al-Muhajiroun” colluded to post violent and extremist content. However, it is important to note that extremist propaganda account for only a very small proportion of the estimated half million videos tagged with the term “Islam” in 2011 (Mosemghvdlishvili & Jansz, 2013). While this study did not set out to uncover extremism, it did conclude that content that would not be deemed suitable for mainstream broadcast appeared on social media platforms (Mosemghvdlishvili & Jansz, 2013). YouTube has appeared in the browser history of a number of selfradicalised jihadists, who have then gone on to conduct terror attacks (Weimann, 2014). Thus, YouTube has been situated as an important platform for jihadists with a “thriving subculture” where users communicate, share propaganda and seek to recruit individuals (Weimann, 2014, p. 10). YouTube is also a platform where extremist Islamophobic views were shared in the wake of the attack by the white supremist Anders Breivik (Yusha’u, 2015). However, once again we should resist the urge to make

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simplistic causal assertions—clearly for everyone that watches a YouTube video and then goes out to commit a terror attack, there are many times more who view the video and do not. This goes back to important work on the problems of causal relationships and jihadism, that highlight because of the “ultra-minority” nature of violent jihadism (Khosrokhavar, 2014). It is extremely difficult to find simplistic causal links between an individual’s biography and activities and why they commit acts of mass violence. Taking these questions from a different perspective, the example presented here aims to contribute to this literature on YouTube and security but examining how a YouTuber uses the platform to produce vernacular security narratives not for jihadist groups, but activity against them. Dovetailing with the theoretical “emptiness” of vernacular security studies, this also requires considering the unexpected, and in this case, even profane, ways that this occurs on social media when considering vernacular security narratives from below. Also, literature has developed that highlights the important symbiotic relationship between “new” and “old” media; YouTube is also a place where “mass media” outlets post video clips about a range of topics, including terrorism (Kayode-Adedeji et al., 2019). The example presented here demonstrates that the reverse trend is also true, that in this case the vernacular security narratives of the YouTuber are picked up by “old” media sources and publicised as a news story. The phenomena of the YouTuber has also not been examined specifically through a security lens. However, part of the sub-dicipline of YouTube studies has examined this question of YouTubers. Specific YouTubers become personalities in their own right, garnering a significant audience (Pereira, 2018). Their role is extensive and fulfil a range of functions, and cover a massive range of subjects. This can range from the banal, such as “unboxing” videos (Ramos-Serrano & Herrero Diz, 2016) to promoting particular brands (Corrêa et al., 2020) with adolescents seeing them as important as entertainers (Aran-Ramspott et al., 2018). YouTubers also indulge in politics. YouTubers incorporate political satire, pulling themes from other aspects of popular culture into their videos on politics and a range of other issues (Silva & Garcia, 2012). This example seeks to contribute to this literature using an example of a YouTuber, who is a personality in his own right, engaging in vernacular security narratives. Mohamed Henni, the YouTuber, has over 1 million subscribers (BFM Sport, 2019), and has made a reputation and has

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become a personality since opening his channel in 2016 (BFM Sport, 2019) through making videos about the performance of the Marseille football team “Olympique de Marseille” (BFM Sport, 2019). Thus, unlike examples cited above in terms of YouTube and its relationship to security, this YouTuber does not discuss security, nor does he run a conspiracy theory based nor an extremist-based YouTube channel. His social media clout is generated through non-security means. This presents an interesting compliment to existing vernacular security discussions. The vernacular turn to date has mainly examined how individuals relate to statist forms of threat/rule implementation. Thus, studies have not specifically examined how individuals form vernacular narratives, nor via social media, regarding security threats from non-state actors. Focus has been on examples such as the state in Indonesia (Bubandt, 2005) or the conservative party in the UK (Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016). Additionally, while the vernacular turn has highlighted the importance of examining how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017) and advocating the understanding of context specific idioms (Bubandt, 2005), this has yet been applied to how a French Muslims football YouTuber would articulate resistance to a terror threat in his specific local idiom. This example has its roots in the wake of the Nice Bastille day attack in 2016 that killed 86 people and for which ISIS issued a claim of responsibility, as terror groups often do, regardless of how closely they were actually involved in the attack itself (Hoffman, 2010). However, this claim of responsibility video was not only in French, recorded by a Francophone jihadist, but also went further than claiming responsibility by also threatening further attacks on French soil: we will repeat [these attacks] against your citizens in the streets of Paris, Marseille and Nice. (Unidentified Francophone Jihadist cited in Véronique, 2016)

Uncharacteristically for a football YouTuber, Henni responded to this threat to his hometown with his own YouTube video “Marseille répond à DAESH” (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016). Simply shot with a mobile phone camera, the video is a very simple composition with Henni filming himself having a monologue against a plain cement wall background. Unlike the slick online video propaganda of jihadist movements like ISIS,

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(Awan, 2017) Henni did not make use of military equipment or slick CGI. Thus, the tools that cultivated a “glamorized and ‘cool’ image” where “Isis fighters are beginning to act as the new rock stars of global cyber jihad” (Awan, 2017, p. 138) are absent from this response to their threat. Lacking in the slick visuals of Islamist propaganda, Henni utilised local vocabularies and idioms to address both the threat, and broader French security context in the wake of jihadist violence, and the position of French Muslims via-a-vis this campaign of violence rooted in a discourse of local security self-reliance: The French state can’t defend us…they can’t defend the French people…the Marseillais we won’t let this happen. (Mohamed Henni, in his YouTube Response to the ISIS threat to Marseille 2016)

A thematic analysis of the discourse presented in the video identified five key themes through which Henni constructs vernacular narratives of security in the light of the ISIS threat—anti-ISIS, questions of religion, crime and toughness in Marseille, multiculturalism and discussions of domestic and/or international politics. Interestingly, given his prominence as a football YouTuber, football does not feature at all in his monologue. The most prominent theme in Henni’s discourse are expressions of anti-ISIS sentiments. It is important here to consider from a vernacular security perspective the kind of idioms which are used here in that they are replete with profanity: ISIS released a video this afternoon that directly threatens Marseille, the cunts. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016) Without a Kalashnikov we would sodomise you [ISIS]. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016) If you want to threaten Marseille find me first, on my mother’s life I will fuck you. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

This opens up a much larger debate that is yet to occur in the vernacular studies literature, in that the local idioms (Bubandt, 2005) and “own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017) may actually be quite offensive and problematic. However, using these common idioms in the local accent of the South of France, Henni situates himself as a long-established resident of the city and someone who

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can talk about security away from the formal French articulations that come from politicians, security experts and security force actors when commenting on the current threat to France from ISIS. His use of idiomatic phrases and insults also differentiates himself from the francophone jihadists against whose threat he is responding. Thus, the use of profanity, which continues extensively in the video and in other themes that emerge as important articulations of vernacular security, should not dissuade scholars from looking for security narratives and important expressions of dissent regarding a range of security actors. As valuable work has been done on “what counts for research” (Aradau et al., 2015), this example suggests that even if vernacular actors use problematic language and profanity, we should still consider their voices as making important impacts in the field. The second most frequent theme in Henni’s video specifically speaks to questions of religion. Situated as an overtly French Muslim YouTuber of North African origin by his name that he uses as the name of his channel, his vernacular security discourse does not shy away from directly confront questions of religion, and vernacularizing the discussion of Islam and terrorism as part of his video monologue. For a video replete with profanity, from a YouTuber whose videos on football are designed to be humorous, he does not shy away from tackling serious questions of religion and terrorism in the context of both Jihadist violence, and broader questions of Muslims in France. He directly addresses and explains the deviance of ISIS from established theocratic orthodoxy. Here, the author uses, amongst other examples, a discussion of how Islam forbids Muslims to judge others as non-believers: In Islam we don’t have the right to call people non-believers. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

This is in line with the opinion of established, orthodox Islamic scholar that “determining whether someone is a kaafir or a faasiq (faasiq) is not up to us, rather it is up to Allaah” (Saalih al-Munajjid, 2007). The author is using established Islamic orthodoxy as a means to differentiate Islam from terrorism. Here, the vernacular discussions of security and terrorism in this context demonstrates an example of where social media enables a Muslim to not only condemn terrorism, but also to nuance and situate the broader relationship between the two when discussing the French converts who travelled to fight in Syria:

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They have converted to terrorism, because it is not Islam they have converted to. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

He also goes onto give his normative view on how a Muslim should behave: The real Muslim is one who does his prayer in his corner in intimacy. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

This adds complexity to the established “good/bad” Muslim dichotomy in the literature (Downing, 2019; Maira, 2009; Mamdani, 2008) that has sought to understand ways that political actors and vernacular narratives of terrorism create a distinction between the “good” Muslim who needs defending from the “bad” Muslim terrorist. This discussion presented by Henni here demonstrates that Muslims themselves in vernacular discussions of security can also deploy this dichotomy as a means to make sense of, and differentiate themselves from, coreligionists who pertain to commit acts of violence in their names. Another unexpected twist from a YouTuber primarily concerned with football, is the extensive discussion of crime, violence and toughness in Marseille as a means to discursively resist the ISIS threat. However, if we are to take seriously vernacular security’s emphasis on the idioms which emerge from the local context: (Bubandt, 2005; Croft & VaughanWilliams, 2017; Jarvis & Lister, 2012), this perhaps should not be seen as so unexpected after all. Marseille has been constructed as, and indeed in reality is, a city that is replete with organised crime and violence (Mah, 2014; Pujol, 2014, 2016; Viard, 1995, 2014). Famous for gruesome gangland killings using military weapons, in particular the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle is being used by men dressed in black with faces obscured by balaclavas, referred to in the local media as “commandos” (La Provence, 2022; Vergnenegre, 2022). Adding to this frequent reports about gangland killings in the city makes use of Kalashnikov assault rifles by criminals who “are not scared of police or the justice system” (thelocal.fr, 2018). Additionally, several incidents where rocket launchers have either been used in armed robberies (Durand, 2002) or confiscated during policy checks (AFP, 2017) in the Marseille region demonstrate the significant issues with heavy weapon proliferation in France. Thus organised and well-executed violence is part and parcel of the local symbols, idioms and vernacular of Marseille. This does, however,

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present something of a paradox as this draws on aspects of the city’s insecurity and re-constructs this insecurity as the foundation of security in the face of state impotence. This is interesting because it demonstrates that in this context the articulation of concerns about insecurity ignores state actors. Even from the perspective of a satirical discussion of security, it is interesting that the French state security forces, whether the army, police forces or intelligence services, are totally absent from discussions of who would act to resist an ISIS attack on Marseille. Henni addresses this directly briefly in the video when he situates the French state is impotent in the face of recent terror attacks: The French state can’t defend us…they can’t defend the French people. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

Rather, Henni situates that vernacular resistance to terrorism within the city would come spontaneously from lay actors within the city: the Marseillais we wouldn’t let this happen. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

and: We will create militias in the neighbourhoods. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

With the seemingly poor performance of the French state in being unable to foil the Charlie Hebdo, Paris and Nice attacks, it is non-state actors and the general population which feature strongly in vernacular discussions of this security vacuum. It is out of this that Henni then connects this idea of citizens’ symbolic resistance to the proliferation of heavy weapons within the city: here there are Kalashnikovs, we have rocket launchers. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

Here vernacular discussions of security pick up on the broader security context of a city where it is seen that the state security forces are impotent in the face of organised crime in a port city long synonymous with activities of various mafias from mid-twentieth century onwards (Mah, 2014;

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Sellami, 2016; Viard, 1995). This is also important for adding new ways with which in a security context the urban myths and symbols important in urban identity (Donald, 1992; Lynch, 1960) intersect with vernacular security discussions. Within this process, Henni also juxtaposes the social landscape of Marseille with other parts of Europe synonymous with being richer, better organised and safer: What do you think it is Marseille? Do you think it’s Switzerland? Do you think it is Luxembourg? (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

The local context here is being thrown into sharp relief for its criminal and violent credentials. Thus, this vernacular security discussion makes sense of resistance to a security threat through the informal, non-state, yet well armed and extremely violent, actors rather than those employed by the state. This takes on an interesting turn because not only were Kalashnikovs the weapons of choice for those who conducted both the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the November 13th attacks in 2015 Paris, but there is also evidence that these weapons were procured on the black market through the same organised crime connections (Bajekal & Walt, 2016). There is no acknowledgement in the vernacular security discussion that these weapons, and indeed these actors, are also intimately connected to the ability of Islamists to carry out such fatal attacks in France but are only constructed in this context as those capable of resisting attacks. This demonstrates the subjective and constructivist tendencies that are important synergies between vernacular security and critical terrorism studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019) of security. The fourth most frequent theme in Henni’s monologue addresses the questions of multiculturalism in Marseille and uses this as a specific lens through which to further complicate, and indeed contest, ISIS’s selfrepresentation as representing Muslims globally (Byman, 2016). Henni brings direct attention to the paradox of an Islamist organisation threatening a city that has a large Muslim population: they threatened Marseille, but there are only Muslims in Marseille. (Marseille répond à DAESH , 2016)

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This demonstrates that the author of the video is using the vernacular discussion of contemporary security threats to also engage with the question of how terrorism is constructed and the subjective labelling grafted onto terror episodes. This highlights the contradiction of a Muslim population being threatened by a violent organisation that overtly proclaims to operate in their interests. This engages with one of the under examined facets of the contemporary French experience of terrorism that a large number of the victims of such violence have been French Muslims (for a deeper discussion of this phenomenon see the work of Joseph Downing, 2019). 5.3.2

Social Media and Vernacular Insecurity on Snapchat

As we saw with the above example, a key selling point of the vernacular security approach has been in its claims to be rooted in, and able to capture, voices of insecurity in the everyday. Central to this is the understanding that there is a need to capture how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017), requiring a context-specific understanding of the idioms that are used to discuss this (Bubandt, 2005). Social media thus presents a logical data source for gaining such understandings. While many platforms, such as Twitter and YouTube, can be accessed both through web browsers and tailor-made apps, increasingly social media platforms are app based and app focused which has spawned an interesting sub-division of app-based research (Condie et al., 2017; Light et al., 2018; Moyle et al., 2019). Examples include the content generation apps Snapchat and TikTok, but also geolocation-based dating apps such as Grinder and Tinder (Condie et al., 2017). App-based platforms have also been conceptualised as being more about sharing content, possible intimate (Poltash, 2012) with those with whom we have pre-existing close relationships (Vaterlaus et al., 2016), and thus not with strangers. These offer some specific opportunities and challenges. While covered in depth in the methods chapter, it is worth quickly recapping one key challenge. This is the problematic function for researchers of “selfdestructing apps” because the content disappears (Bayer et al., 2016). Thus, the content is not something that stays around and can be minded or captured in the way that more “traditional” apps such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. To study the emerging vernacular security discourse

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on such apps requires a significantly different methodological approach than that which is applied to Twitter datasets. In this case, we can see that such apps are important sites for “ephemeral social interactions” (Bayer et al., 2016). They are also important sites for ephemeral security speak. This ephemeral nature means that such apps are more likely to be used for close relationships and not for sharing content with strangers (Vaterlaus et al., 2016) as is the case with Twitter. This affords users a privacy and intimacy that some scholars have argued has resulted in such platforms being used to share more intimate and risqué content, such as sexually explicit content (Poltash, 2012). A key aspect of the case study presented here is the use of an app to articulate, and indeed practice, vernacular forms of insecurity (Appendix 1). To consider how this is done we need to consider the literature around the use of technology by drug dealers, and indeed the way that branding works in a context of (in)security. Work has been done that demonstrates that drug dealers use technologies to increase profits (Moyle et al., 2019); however, little work is done on how this translates to applications. It is also scantly considered how criminals use technologies to brand their activities in a way that resonates with the particularities of the local context, a kind of “security branding”. Branding as a concept has been applied to a number of sub-fields in which the capitalist logic of brand creation has found a function in previously unbranded contexts. These include place branding to move away from perceptions of sex-tourism (Kumar, 2015) and the creative industries as a selling point for the urban environment (Hessler & Zimmermann, 2008). Here the logic of creating and cultivating a coherent image for the purpose of “selling” a place to tourists or investors has been widely adapted. Examining this question of branding when applied specifically to drugs, there is some burgeoning discussions around the likelihood of brands emerging as legalisation, especially of cannabis products, moves ahead (Lesh, 2019) and also how drug dealers and criminals use the online sphere to cultivate and propagate online personas (Bakken, 2021). This is interesting because neither thread of the literature has identified the possibilities of cross-pollination between the branding of criminality and drugs and the branding of the urban environment, something which vernacular constructions of security in the ephemeral world of applications demonstrate significant promise in. However, an issue with this approach can be considered to be vernacular securities lack in attaching these important observations to questions

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of how vernacular voices are attached to actually creating material insecurity on the ground. Thus, while the vernacular turns make extremely important inroads into the discursive field, it neglects to connect this to the possible material aspects of vernacular experiences of insecurity. Transitional justice has been active in seeking to breakdown simple security dichotomies (Hourmat, 2016; Tabak, 2011), for example between conflict and post-conflict (Tabak, 2011) and between victim and perpetrator (Hourmat, 2016). Simplistic understandings of vernacular security studies could create such a dichotomy of those creating (in)security, and those constructing this (in)security—i.e. those who are doing the construction, who we are researching are separate from creating insecurity itself. This dichotomy holds true for the example above, where an important aspect of the narrative created by the YouTuber rests with his clear lack of affiliation with the Islamic State and clear expressions of wishing to live in security—i.e. specifically outside of jihadist terror attacks in France. The following example, however, demonstrates that this dichotomy does not always hold true, and could even hamper the development of a vernacular securities agenda precisely because there are a range of non-elite voices “from below” that construct (in) security from a range of perspectives, and can do this persuasively precisely because they are themselves the creators of insecurity through a range of illegal activities. Thus, while a lot is done on contesting security narratives and policies from below (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016), less is done on how vernacular insecurities are created from below. It is important not to create a false dichotomy between vernacular materiality and vernacular discourse but in the sense that there are those who are involved in material insecurity in the daily sphere who use social media to be very much involved in consciously using idioms and symbols of the everyday in the constructions of their insecurity. However, this cuts to the heart of another dichotomy within the advocation of the expansion of security studies to new kinds of security threats in the international systems. While the critical security studies agenda has called for the inclusion of concerns such as international organised crime (Buzan, Waever et al., 1997), it not only has lacked in accounting for this, but also the emergence of a vernacular agenda makes this more complicated. This is because of the scales of analysis of IR become distorted in this sense—international organised crime is international and thus a relatively easy sell to international relations as a non-state actors, but vernacular, i.e. every day, criminality is seen often as something that

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sociology and anthropology are concerned with and not IR. However, this sets up another false dichotomy because certain aspects of everyday criminality, such as drug dealing, are only possible because of international crime networks. Thus logically without vernacular “retail”, the international “wholesale” would not be profitable. Additionally here it is important to understand how the local idioms are used in creating (in)security. Unlike the example above, which had little in terms of visual elements, being the author monologuing into a mobile phone camera against the background of a plain concrete wall, snapchat offers significant opportunities to create images and videos, which the users take abundant advantage of to foster their insecurity narratives. This gels with previous observations in the field emphasising the importance of the image in IR with the caveat that they must be understood through constituted by accompanying text and speech (Hansen, 2011). Hansen (2011) goes on to argue for the growing importance of mobile phone cameras changing the relationship between producers and consumers and between audiences and elites (Hansen, 2011). This needs to be theorised more fully given the complex and symbiotic nature of the new media landscape. It is not sufficient to understand that individuals can make multimodal outputs with a cellular telephone in the contemporary era. Rather, it also needs to be considered how, why and where these cultural artefacts are shared which is neither simple nor straightforward. Additionally, Hansen’s analysis (Hansen, 2011) needs to also think about the increasing “meme-ification” of political discourse where it is not images rendered meaning by text per se which are important, but rather how user-generated content allows the manufacture and/or manipulation of images and texts specifically designed to talk security. Additionally, as with many elements of security on social media mentioned in this book, unexpected symbols and narratives also appear—including references to the space, place and urban imaginaries and narratives of the local context (Lynch, 1960; van Eldik et al., 2019). The analysis section starts with sex workers, not because they are in the first instance the most significant vectors of (in)security found in this study, but because of their unique functions within the network as promotional nodes. Unlike other kinds of users, who focus on promoting on their own products and services, sex workers do this but also frequently promote and showcase the services of others. This is not limited to illegal products and services, nor limited to advertising sexual services, but a mix

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of legal services or their own and of others, and also personal pictures of their daily lives, and sometimes of their families. Contextually, however, it is important to not dismiss that using Snapchat to market sex work is also encouraging lawbreaking due to both the French laws on prostitution and also because of other possible offenses that are connected to prostitution. Since 2016 France has instituted a “Nordic” approach to sex work criminalising the buyer and not the seller of sexual services (Long read: How the Nordic model in France changed everything for sex workers, 2020). This means that the “cyber solicitation” on Snapchat observed by sex workers is not a crime nor a source of insecurity per se, unless the sex workers observed were victims of human trafficking or pimping, issues that France has failed to adequately address (CoE, 2022). No evidence of human trafficking was observed on Snapchat during this study, and in addition to selling sex, the sex workers in this study also frequently offered to supply legal drugs to their clients as part of their services. However, in terms of understanding how Snapchat promotes forms of (in)security they were important in acting as promotional nodes that recommended the services of other actors who were directly involved in selling and marketing insecurity on Snapchat—i.e. the drug dealers and those committing fraud. They also advertised the events organised to undermine the French COVID-19 restrictions. Their action varied significantly, as most sex workers used Snapchat to promote their services, and advertise where they were working at the time. Within this, some would cultivate a brand, and disappear. Others would be regular posters throughout the study and post only about their work. Others, such as @SW1, would post frequently about a range of topics—including family events with parents and siblings, day trips, holidays and meeting with friends. However, she served the function of being one of the study’s most critical nodes because she would go on to recommend 12 users and offer significant inroads into possibilities for (in)security. These included drug dealers (2), fraudsters (2) and adverts for illegal parties during the COVID-19 pandemic. This demonstrates that methodologically it is important to maintain observation of accounts that on the surface, in their first snaps, don’t seem to be extremely relevant to insecurity at the time. This study started by following a snap handle openly advertising drugs, and other drug dealers were recommended by sex workers. The observation that drug dealers use social media is not in itself new (Bakken,

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2021; Moyle et al., 2019). However, applying the constructivist understanding of (in)security enables gaining more profound insights into not only how apps enable drug dealers to sell, but also the tools offered by apps such as Snapchat enable to formulate particular branding strategies to do so. Additionally, while critical security studies has advocated the expansion of the field into non-state concerns such as transnational crime (Buzan, Waever et al., 1997, p. 2), very few dedicated works concerned with this theme have actually materialised. An exception to this have been works that examine organised crime, its origins and structures (Carrapiço, 2011). The drugs trade has received significant attention, but the online drugs market, and specifically the app-based drugs market, less so, an exception being a study asking users how and why they use social media platforms to procure drugs (Moyle et al., 2019). The sales aspect has been covered in a study of Silk Road that countered the idea it was a retail interface, an “eBay for drugs” and found Silk Road was more focused on business to business wholesale trade (Aldridge & Décary-Hétu, 2014). However, this study uncovered Snapchat as a significant “retail interface” for recreational drugs sales. However, going deeper than this considering this from the constructivist perspective of vernacular security, it is possible to gain insights into how these users symbolically and discursively construct their activities. Using the discursive tools of vernacular security, and the in-depth approach of netnography enables tackling this question from a different angle in understanding the branding and business strategies that are used to further this form of insecurity on social media. A key theme that emerges is the effort placed into visual crime branding on snapchat, using two symbolic visual repertoires. Firstly, there is the re-making and subversion of popular culture themes to brand the drugs. This involves custom-made packaging printed with characters from popular culture— Bart Simpson, Heisenberg from Breaking Bad and characters from the Netflix series Narcos. The second important visual repertoire was the use of specific symbols from Marseille itself—such as the number 13 (the number of the city’s department in France) and the silhouette of the city’s main church, which serves as a de-facto symbol of the city itself. An addition marketing strategy centred upon co-opting techniques from mainstream capitalism. Firstly, special offers—a free lighter and rolling papers with every purchase, or a free small quantity of other drugs with a purchase of another drug type—demonstrate the co-option of mainstream capitalism techniques. Additionally, the users used Snapchat,

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as in other themes of crime and insecurity picked up, to collect and showcase feedback and testimonials. This was done through showing screenshots of the app’s private messaging feature with complimentary comments about their products and services. Testimonials also took the form of videos, where the identity of the buyers was masked and they were shown being able to choose their own purchase from a range of the same drugs, with text overlaid saying “the customer is king”. However, this open approach to location and branding had far darker and worrying elements in their open flaunting of military grade weapons alongside the vast quantities of drugs showcased in their snaps—including a Kalashnikov assault rifle on the table with their drugs. Their logo, which they showed gratified in a large (circa 1.5 metres high) mural on a wall, included a Disney cartoon character smoking a joint, and firing a Kalashnikov. This will not overtly threatening violence per se, they make overt efforts to demonstrate that it is possible should the need arise. They even boasted about continuing to be open during the COVID-19 pandemic. An area that emerges as an important vector of (in)security on Snapchat can be seen in Snapchat being used as a retail interface for marketing a range of fraud and state corruption. This makes an important thematic contribution to two literatures. Firstly, it presents a countervailing logic to voices that argue that the increased transparency of social media may work to reduce corruption (Enikolopov et al., 2018; Jha & Sarangi, 2017). More specifically to France, it also adds to the literature on corruption that is lacking in terms of the experience of corruption by everyday citizens (Agence Française Anticorruption, 2018), instead focusing on cases of high-level corruption such as corruption involving the EDF energy company; it was discovered that “corruption in France had become so common that many members of the political elite, irrespective of party, were under investigation” (Heilbrunn, 2005). Thus here it is important that details of corruption on the local level are offered by studying Snapchat, but also that social media acts as a retail interface for the marketing and selling of a range of corruption and fraud products that present (in)security problems due to offering to undermine the state, financial institutions and social media companies. Thus from a cyber security perspective, while there has been significant attention paid to cybersecurity and hacking at the strategic level of cyber-crime (Alexandrou, 2021) and information security (Foltz & Simpson, 2020), there remains significant gaps in the literature. However, there is little discussion about the “retail” end of cyber-crime and data fraud in how such

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tools are marketed to individuals. A disclaimer is required here, due to the passive nature of the netnographic method employed, there is no way of knowing whether the fraud services offered were actually possible, or if their offering was an act of fraud in itself, where Snapchat users would pay for a service they would then not receive with no recourse to a refund. Further research is required here that due to ethical and security concerns render beyond the scope of this study. Two key themes emerge here—offering a range of retail fraud and cyber security products on Snapchat, and then also offering a range of products for state corruption. The first theme of general hacking and fraud products include holiday bookings featuring videos of user testimonials in their luxury hotel rooms say the users snap handle (user @Fraud3) and more vague promises (@Fraud4) to directly hack into a range of social media platforms to get account information and access. These are both abstract and not rooted in the locality of the city itself. However, @Fraud2 offers specific fraud products locally, such as fake bank statements, fake tax documents and fake bank statements printed out and delivered to individuals in Marseille. This includes showing testimonials from satisfied clients that have used these documents to rent houses. Perhaps more worrying are the range of fraud services that specifically relate to corruption of the French state directly. @Fraud1offers a range of services related to motor vehicle offenses. This includes a reducing fines by 50% that are issued for red lights and speed cameras. Interestingly, it is specifically stipulated that this can only be done if the fines are automated and not given specifically by a law enforcement officer. It is specified that the payment must be made in person in Marseille. They also go onto to offer in October 2020 a range of services related to getting a fake French driving license, but one that is also features in the electronic system of the French state. This includes providing fake theory and practical test results. Like much research during 2020 and beyond, the unexpected and sudden disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic would leave a stamp on this research. Thus, there is some overlap here with the theme of corruption, but the specifics of the health emergency render this a slightly different form of (in)security in social media not only working as a retail face of fraud products and services, but more specifically at this point a range of such products that work specifically to undermine the state’s crisis response to a health emergency. Those using Snapchat

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to create insecurity adapted to the new social reality once the lockdown was announced. This demonstrates that Snapchat was used in a number of ways to subvert and undermine France’s emergency COVID19 measures. Two features stand out here. Firstly, there were users such as @Fraud1 who offered for sale fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination records so that individuals could benefit from having a “pass sanitaire” that from 1st July was phased in as a requirement for entry to restaurants, intercity trains and to travel abroad. Additionally, further undermining French health measures, a range of illegal parties were advertised via Snapchat. In November 2020, party was advertised that specifically branded itself as a “prohibition era” event in direct opposition to the national lockdown at the time. In a common theme of such parties advertised, it would be held in illegal premises in industrial areas on the outskirts of the city. When pictures and videos of these parties are shared, they show open indoor smoking and drug taking. Given the specific risks of transmission at mass events in indoor spaces, the creation and advertising of such events is clearly problematic and demonstrates how social media can be used to subvert and undermine government attempts to mediate crisis situations such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another theme that emerges here is the use of snapchat to spread conspiracy theories. This themes emerges because a conspiracy theory account was recommended by a user who used Snapchat to peddle fraud products, in addition to also selling daily items (@Fraud1). It is important to stress that spreading conspiracy theories is not a crime, nor directly promotes insecurity in the same way that undermining COVID19 vaccine systems or selling drugs does. However, there is some limited research that links exposure to, and belief in conspiracy theories with increased preponderance to criminal behaviour (Jolley et al., 2019). Conspiracy theories frequently contain a simplistic division of the world into a good “us” and an evil “them” along Manichean lines (Oliver & Wood, 2014). This also involves promoting the distrust of elites (Uscinski, 2018) as the vanguard of these evil forces that seek to subdue to “good” masses. One such theory spread by this user on Snapchat revolved around the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory that has become increasingly popular in recent years and centres on the idea that the trails left by passenger jets are evidence that the “evil” elite is spraying chemicals on the population, including for mind control (Bakalaki, 2016; Tingley & Wagner, 2017). The account also touched on anti-semitic

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conspiracies, in one series of Snapchats discussing the role of the Rothschild family in “buying” Europe, and in another series of tweets posting photos of celebrities and politicians with their names, and then their “Jewish” names, such as Natalie Portman and her birth name of Natalie Hershlag. Anti-semitic conspiracy theories are common place on a range of social media platforms, being widespread on YouTube (Allington & Joshi, 2020; Allington et al., 2021). However, this does not situate them within a specific network, nor provide a specific connection with criminality in the sense of a specific Snapchat account that is recommended by criminals that spreads such messages.

5.4 Conclusions on Social Media Vernacular Security in the Digital Age This chapter has set out to contribute to, in my opinion, one of the most exciting developments in the CSS field in recent years—the emergence of vernacular security studies that seeks to give voice to the experiences and constructions of security to those who inhabit non-elite spaces. If the Copenhagen school (Buzan, Waever et al.,1997) broke open the CSS field in the 1990s with the revolutionary observation that security is not just material objective facts but is rooted in relational processes of construction and contestation, they considered the elites as the central reference point in this process and thus security studies more broadly. While elites are clearly still important, elites by their very nature are not only small in number but their experiences are also remarkably unrepresentative of broader social experiences. However, if even this rather modest undertaking meant that “CSS takes on a larger burden” (Buzan, Waever et al., 1997, p. 35), opening the Pandora’s box to ever multiplying numbers of voices within the field the burden grows even heavier. This requires us as scholars of security to pose an existential and extremely important question vis-à-vis the vernacular turn in CSS in that does pushing the definition of security further and further mean we are actually discussing nothing? (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 37). Even if we seek to limit voices to the domain of social media and thus cutting out the almost infinite number of other vernacular security possibilities, we are still including an extremely diverse and numerous range of voices. Adding to this the multiple possibilities opened up by the different means that different platforms offer for self-expression, the burden remains significant.

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However, all is not lost and this does not mean that because there are a huge number of vernacular security voices on social media that they are either too labour intensive to study, nor too diffuse in their framings of security that they render the term meaningless. Rather the struggle for scholars is to bring structure and order to the tangled chaos of vernacular security constructions on social media. Doing this is paradoxically aided by the theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) of vernacular security studies that “allows for greater fidelity to the diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) because of the ability of scholars to bring a range of non-security literatures to bear on the myriad of ways that security is constructed, subverted and contested on social media platforms. Thus, the important observation from the Paris school is that ideas about security from sociology, criminology or history are no less important than those that evolve from IR in understanding the international security context (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) rings true here. This becomes important as the examples in this chapter demonstrate that it is precisely the tools and understandings from a wide range of disciplines that enable structure to be given to vernacular security voices in this chapter. For example, both drug dealers on Snapchat and the YouTube influencer structure their constructions of security using the idioms, symbols and legends of the local urban setting of Marseille. This stitches the international and the local together in ways that must be understood through the existing rich literature on urban identity, space and place. Thus, if we are to take seriously claims by vernacular security studies that it seeks to understand context-specific understanding of idioms of uncertainty and fear about global, national and/or local security concerns (Bubandt, 2005) and how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017), we should look to the range of literatures, whether anthropological, sociological and criminological that already do this in non-security contexts. However, this also comes with words of caution for the broader normative mission of several understandings of critical security studies. “Vernacular”, with its focus on non-elite voices “from below”, could be misinterpreted as a synonym for the “emancipation” called for by the Welsh school (Wyn Jones, 1999). This taps into the broader debate about social media as an emancipatory tool where initial hopes of optimism

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have had to give way to more modest, nuanced and complex acknowledgements that it is also used as a form of control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). Added to this are myriad of observations about the digital divide (Ali, 2011; Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006) that should foster caution even before we consider how social media works, which is that many do not even have access to the internet, less the smartphones, apps and devices required to compose a tweet or post a TikTok video. Thus, even if we are to discuss perhaps a far more modest “discursive emancipation” in the light of the vernacular school and social media technologies, this must also be done extremely cautiously. While we may be making ground in studying voices from below and giving some space to the previously voiceless in scholarship and security debates, we must be continuous and overt that this is still privileging certain voices over others. Beyond debates about control by governments and corporations or even access to technology, social media is also not the radically flat utopian discursive plain. While all users are equal, some are far more equal than others in successfully managing to employ strategies to gain increased influence and exposure, or perhaps just being “lucky” and in the right discursive place at the right time to capture influence. But within this, the YouTuber covered here demonstrates that while he is indeed a non-security elite voice from below, he still is embedded within, and with over 1 million views of the video analysed here and 1.84 million subscribers to his channel as of July 2022; he is indeed part of a new, emergent social media elite whose voice is amplified and louder than many others on social media platforms. In addition, there are the questions raised for security scholars in the vernacular field raised by the swing to app based social media platforms, especially platforms like Snapchat whom data is “self-destructing” (Bayer et al., 2016). Nor has vernacular security studies sought to study and understand the ways in which vernacular security studies can be applied to the creation of narratives not to resist the imposition of security policy by the state, but in the creation of narratives to foster insecurity from below. The application of the netnographic (Alavi et al., 2010; Kozinets, 2002) method also shows that methodologically this is something that offers significant opportunities to vernacular security studies and how it can develop further studies in the social media context. Vernacular security studies has made extensive use of “ethnographic” interventions in security contexts (Bubandt, 2005; Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009; Hultin, 2010), and as vernacular security studies moves further into the social media field, netnography seems a natural methodological step as it enables the

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gathering of idioms and forms of expression from below from a digital perspective.

Appendices Appendix 1 Codebook and theme tallies from the analysis of the YouTube video “Daesh Menace Marseille”. Coding themes

Description

Tally (%)

Anti-DAESH

Insults, denigration of ISIS and fighters and/or expressions against them Discussions of doctrine, orthodoxy, scripture and practice of Islam and/or other religions Reference to the city being characterised by crime and/or violence and/or drugs trade and/or arms proliferation Reference to the city’s multiculturalism and/or Muslim and/or migrant population Reference to and/or discussion of domestic and/or international politics

35

Religion Crime/toughness

Multiculturalism Politics

20 19

12 14

Appendix 2 Coding tallies of snaps analysed for this study—11,530 snaps where viewed, below represents the 59% of snaps that were marked “relevant” to security concerns. Relevant

%

Sex work Drug dealing Fraud COVID-19 Conspiracy theories

31 29 20 11 9

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Mosemghvdlishvili, L., & Jansz, J. (2013). Framing and praising Allah on YouTube: Exploring user-created videos about Islam and the motivations for producing them. New Media & Society, 15(4), 482–500. Moyle, L. et al. (2019). #Drugsforsale: An exploration of the use of social media and encrypted messaging apps to supply and access drugs. International Journal of Drug Policy, 63, 101–110. Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014). Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952–966. Pereira, S. (2018). The YouTubers phenomenon: What makes YouTube stars so popular for young people? The YouTubers phenomenon: What makes YouTube stars so popular for young people? 107–123. Persily, N., & Tucker, J. A. (2020). Introduction. In Social media and democracy, the state of the field and prospects for reform (pp. 1–9). Cambridge University Press. Poltash, N. A. (2012). Snapchat and sexting: A snapshot of baring your bare essentials. Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, 19(4), 1–24. Pujol, P. (2014). French deconnection. R. Laffont/Wildproject. Pujol, P. (2016). La Fabrique du monstre. Les Arènes. Ramos-Serrano, M., & Herrero Diz, P. (2016). Unboxing and brands: YouTubers phenomenon through the case study of EvanTubeHD. Available from: https:// idus.us.es/handle/11441/41670 (Accessed 9 August 2022). Saalih al-Munajjid, M. (2007). Guidelines on takfeer (ruling someone to be a kaafir)—Islam question & answer. Available from: https://islamqa.info/ en/answers/85102/guidelines-on-takfeer-ruling-someone-to-be-a-kaafir (Accessed 26 June 2019). Sellami, S. (2016). Le vrai visage du narco-banditisme. Marseille, Le Parisien. Silva, P. D. da, & Garcia, J. L. (2012). YouTubers as satirists: Humour and remix in online video. JeDEM—eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 4– 1. Available from: https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/7165 (Accessed 9 August 2022). Snelson, C. (2011). YouTube across the disciplines: A review of the literature. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Available from: https:// scholarworks.boisestate.edu/edtech_facpubs/11 Tabak, S. (2011). False dichotomies of transitional justice: Gender, conflict and combatants in Colombia. SSRN Electronic Journal. Available from: http:// www.ssrn.com/abstract=1926956 (Accessed 16 July 2022). thelocal.fr. (2018). Marseille policeman who faced Kalashnikov gang: ‘They do not fear us’—The Local. Available from: https://www.thelocal.fr/20180523/mar seille-policeman-who-faced-kalashnikov-gang-they-do-not-fear-us (Accessed 25 June 2019). Tingley, D., & Wagner, G. (2017). Solar geoengineering and the chemtrails conspiracy on social media. Palgrave Communications, 3(1), 1–7.

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Tufekci, Z. (2018). Opinion | YouTube, the great radicalizer—The New York Times. The New York Times, 5. Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.). (2018). Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them. Oxford University Press. Vaterlaus, J. M. et al. (2016). “Snapchat is more personal”: An exploratory study on Snapchat behaviors and young adult interpersonal relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, 594–601. Vaughan-Williams, N., & Stevens, D. (2016). Vernacular theories of everyday (in)security: The disruptive potential of non-elite knowledge. Security Dialogue, 47 (1), 40–58. Vergnenegre, A. (2022). VIDEO. Marseille: Une tentative d’enlèvement par un commando filmée en plein jour dans la cité de la Bricarde. Available https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/provence-alpes-cote-d-azur/ from: bouches-du-rhone/marseille/video-marseille-une-tentative-d-enlevement-parun-commando-filmee-en-plein-jour-dans-la-cite-de-la-bricarde-2587936.html (Accessed 11 August 2022). Véronique, P. (2016). Daesh se félicite de l’attentat de Nice et menace Marseille. https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/attentat-a-niceAvailable from: daesh-se-felicite-et-menace-marseille-7784174550 (Accessed 26 December 2018). Viard, J. (1995). Marseille: Une ville impossible. Documents Payot. Viard, J. (2014). Marseille, le réveil violent d’une ville impossible, Editions de l’Aube. France. Weimann, G. (2014). New terrorism and new media. Available from: https:// cve-kenya.org/media/library/Weimann_2014_New_Terrorism_and_New_ Media.pdf (Accessed 9 August 2022). Wolfsfeld, G. et al. (2013). Social media and the Arab Spring: Politics comes first. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(2), 115–137. Wyn Jones, R. (1999). Security, strategy and critical theory. Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc. Yusha’u, M. J. (2015). Extremism or terrorism: Communicating Islamophobia on YouTube in the Norwegian attacks. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 8(2), 171–191.

CHAPTER 6

Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age

The second examples examines abstention under #SansMoi7Mai that highlights how political distrust is constructed on social media. This shines a light on something quite different in terms of security and democracy. This is through a hashtag that promotes voter abstention, highlighting how social media discourses of abstention are centred on themes of political distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018). However, this is rendered problematic by the contemporary trends in political distrust away from particular politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019). Within the discussion of nonparticipation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai, distrust in the French media and in the broader political system at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge that demonstrate the way that discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014).

6.1

Introducing Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age

On the surface, and indeed deep in the political theory, democracy has traditionally been associated with peace and not insecurity. The rule of law, free and fair elections and the peaceful transition of power could © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_6

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be read as an anti-thesis to security concerns. While liberalism saw the internal political arrangements of the state as important factors in the security equation (Hegre, 2000), this was primarily as a function of the likelihood of a state to pose a security threat to its neighbours. As the logic of the liberal peace hypothesis went, democracies were less likely to go to war than their authoritarian counterparts (Hegre, 2000). In this case, democracy itself was the referent object, the thing to protect, against which existential threats were structured and judged. However, examining the questions of democracy from the perspective of social media requires a different understanding to take place—what happens when aspects of the democratic process—be it candidates, parties and institutions, become constructed as existential threats and something to be securitised? This important shift, and the ability of social media to provide a space for such voices to emerge and effectively securitise democracy, poses some important security questions. This is not to say that at particular moments within the international order that democracy has not been the centre of conflict, and as such this discussion needs to be placed into its historical context. We don’t need to look far back to see the Cold War and how democracy as an ideological counterpoint to communism was a central part of the global rivalry between the USA and the USSR (Pee & Schmidli, 2018). Within this, the USA was a paradoxical head of the democratic world. McCarthyism and the obsession with “reds under the bed” (Arp & Guilfoy, 2017) and routing out possible authoritarians at home was juxtaposed with the support for hardcore right wing authoritarianism dictatorships in their foreign policy abroad, for example in Latin America (Schmitz, 2006). The end of the Cold War and the much critiqued “end of history” situated democracy as the dominant ideology globally, this also came with contradictions and paradoxes. This includes the USA’s paradoxical foreign policy of “democracy promotion” by force in places like Iraq (Robinson, 2006), while at the same time supporting of tyranny in states such as Saudi Arabia who imprison pro-democracy voices (Cohen-Almagor, 2018). Political history neither stops nor advances in a linear and predictable fashion and the rise of new media and communications technologies have aided in a landscape whereby the relationship between democracy and security has been radically altered. However, contemporary developments have raised a number of issues that drive the discussions in this chapter. Firstly, the increased polarisation of politics in the USA and beyond have questioned the stability of

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democratic systems where “truth” and indeed the ability of peaceful transitions to take place are increasingly called into question. Also, the trend of democratic backsliding in many established democracies has called into question the ability of democracies to sustain themselves into question and has further weakened naïve arguments about the “end of history” and the linear expansion of democratic governance across the globe. Added into this mix is the development of new forms of communications technologies—i.e. social media. This is important because a key aspect traditionally of democracies has been free and independent media outlets (Baker, 2001). Obviously, this assumption requires significant nuance given the historically important role states, individuals and indeed corporate interests have had in shaping the media landscape, thus questioning exactly what “independent” can mean when operationalised in a specific context, and social media clearly adds a new dimension to this existing context. However, it is nowhere near certain how all of these moving parts fit together, and thus there are significant complexities and challenges here. This is because of the complexities of considering how a dynamic, diverse and diffuse discursive landscape such as social media fits into an equally dynamic, diverse and contentious landscape as democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Thus interrogating this relationship of social media, security and democracy requires considering how social media because a key area for the securitisation of democracy. In this case, it is important to both identify, and indeed unpick, the multitude of ways that social media acts as a landscape within which threats to aspects of democracy emerge. Of particular importance here are observations around how democracy is seen as being increasingly manipulated and challenged by social media platforms. This has been discussed widely in terms of UK to cede from the European Union, and the election of Donald Trump in the USA both relied heavily on the spread of false facts and information specifically designed to influence voters and change the outcome of the democratic process (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Nussbaum, 2017). Thus, with the discursive turn in critical security studies (Buzan et al., 1997), we can apply lenses to the questions of democracy and social media in how facets of democracy are constructed but also “securitised”—i.e. the development of voices on social media which construct aspects of the democratic process—parties, candidates and structures—as existential threats to the well-being of a range of societal actors. This calls into question also some of the key tenets of vernacular security studies, in the idea that voices from below

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mediate and express their understandings of security concerns (Bubandt, 2005; Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017), but in ways hostile and in opposition to the very structures and processes which allow this expression to take place. This chapter examines two examples from the French presidential election of 2017 that demonstrate the complicated relationship between social media, democracy and security and the unexpected ways that these are constructed online. While much attention has been paid to the cybersecurity dimensions of hacking and election meddling, the broader social media environment is a context where democracy and the democratic process are constructed in ways that securitise candidates and aspect of the democratic process. This first example goes further than situating #MacronLeaks as a classic “hack and leak” operation because by analysing social media we can go further and see how this “hack and leak” is constructed on social media, in a context where French voters could not turn to their domestic media outlets. The coverage on Twitter is dominated by anti-Macron sentiment that delves into anti-semitic conspiracy theories, connecting Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France and refuting Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the critical discursive turn in the security studies enables us to go furthering in examining how the social media environment can construct democracies, and indeed direct threats to them, in connection with other key themes in contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism. The second example examines abstention under #SansMoi7Mai that highlights how political distrust is constructed on social media. This shines a light on something quite different in terms of security and democracy. This is through a hashtag that promotes voter abstention, highlighting how social media discourses of abstention are centred on themes of political distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018). However, this is rendered problematic by the contemporary trends in political distrust away from particular politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019). Within the discussion of nonparticipation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai, distrust in the French media and in the broader political system at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge that demonstrate the way that discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a

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range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014).

6.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age One only needs to consult a foundational political science text book to encounter the refrain that an independent, free and uncensored press is a fundamental cornerstone of a functioning democracy. However, below this seemingly “common sense” observation exists a cornucopia of debates, both critical and more orthodox about exactly what this means that have spawned important sub-disciplines within both communications studies and political science. Additionally, the marginalisation of particular groups within media narratives, and indeed even how a fair press can be operationalised given the increasingly problematic political economy of news media that severely limits the resources of journalism to scrutinise power, demonstrates the bamboozling nature of the intersection of communications and democracy even prior to the introduction of the “invasive specifies” of new media into the news media ecosystem. Thus, democracies are going through a process of increased polarisation that is an important contextual point of reference for the discussion ongoing here. Grafting yet a further problematic onto this already congested opening paragraph, considering how security, and in particular security as seen as a social construct in its critical embodiment, fits into this equation which opens a further Pandora’s box of questions. As with most questions in the social sciences, it is important to resist the temptation towards simplistic answers. As such, it is important to resist sweeping generalisations about democracy and social media that are de-coupled both from a deeper theoretical consideration of the media landscape, but also to consider these debates within a broader social and political context. As such, it is naïve to argue that social media memes spread on social media handed Donald Trump the US presidency (Nussbaum, 2017) without considering how and why such memes have a resonance with the preexisting material and discursive context of the contemporary American and global political systems. To begin to think about the relationship between democracy, social media and critical security studies requires examining a range of literatures. Firstly, it is important to examine literature on democracy itself, to contextualise the examples to come and to think about how diverse

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and multifaceted democracy is in both theory and practice. This includes ongoing questions of the dynamic and changing context of contemporary democracies and polarisation. It is also important to consider the existing literature on social media and democracy as some important questions have been covered already on the relationship between social media, democracy and to a certain extent some questions on security. It is especially important from a critical security perspective to highlight the problematic relationship between social media, democracy and emancipation in the light of the initial optimism that social media would enable the overthrow of authoritarian regimes. This has not been the case, and social media has even been used to both disrupt democratic elections, and has even been implicated in the erosion of democracies and causing increased polarisation. In addition, social media presents an important challenge to democracies in the sense of mis-information and a brief understanding of how and what this constitutes is the final stop before this chapter moves onto examining two empirical examples. Clearly, the question of what constitutes democracy is extremely wide ranging and beyond the humble scope of this volume (O’Mahony, 1974). However, it is also vital to touch on such debates if we are to consider the possible theoretical and empirical implications that the meteoric rise of new media use has for the broader context of established, emerging and indeed retreating democracies across the world. These larger debates thus serve to contextualise and inform the more specific questions posed about democracy, security and new media. It is important to remain critical of democracy. Democracy is not one continuous system of inclusion nor universal suffrage from Aristotle through the French and American revolutions to the election of Donald Trump. Rather, democratic systems have histories of excluding groups defined by economics (Athens: non-property owning slaves), gender (the French Revolutions “rights of man” did not intend to include women) and race (the emergence of democracy in the USA did not automatically emancipate African-American slaves). This is also not something that stops with universal suffrage. It has been noted that the assumed liberal peace, equality and security in established democracies does not acknowledge the ongoing inequalities in exposure to violence and insecurity (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020). As such, it is important to consider inequalities within democratic societies not simply in terms of economic inequalities inherent, and normatively accepted, in a liberal economic system but also the values that are supposedly universal and not limited in

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access. However, in terms of security as a critical understanding of threat construction and discourse, there emerges an interesting paradox that cleavages would emerge in late capitalism where a frustrated, educated class would emerge that would take on the struggles of strata that it does not technically belong to, and mobilise against their own material interests to move towards socialism is not a new idea (Schumpeter, 1942). Democracy is also something that is extremely diverse in both its conceptualisation in theory as well as its operationalisation in practice that stretch from the absolute minimal to more maximalist understandings of participation. Minimalist understandings of democracy, such as those advanced by Schumpeter (Schumpeter, 1942), situate it as a competitive election where representatives are chosen through a competitive process to carry out their wills. As such, it can be seen as the only means by which a people can change their rulers without bloodshed (Popper, 1962). The defence of these minimalist arguments makes some important points about the ambiguity of the grounds upon which ever more components of maximalist definitions of “democracy” are selected and added to the conceptual yardstick (Przeworski, 1999). There are conceptual risks here that democracy then becomes “an alter on which everyone hangs his or her favourite ex voto” (Przeworski, 1999, p. 12). Examples include that are difficult to both define and enforce notions of “justice, dignity, rationality, security, freedom” (Przeworski, 1999, p. 12). Key within this is a focus on the ability of the act of changing government to diffuse, if not completely settle, the cleavages and social conflicts in societies (Przeworski, 1999). While this observation is now some two decades old, it is prophetic in the light of the polarisation of contemporary politics and the difficulties in overcoming social cleavages in contemporary democracy (McCoy & Press, 2022). This polarisation is not only something that exists at the ballot box but also something that has important intersections with both new media technologies—an important site at which discourses around polarisation are created, and indeed polarised, and security because of the ways by which the democratic system itself is increasingly constructed as the threat to be mistrusted and not just particular politicians (Bertsou, 2019; Downing & Ahmed, 2019). It is interesting to note that within this context critical security scholars have argued that democratic norms and principles can offer important insights into not only settling cleavages, but importantly into de-securitising issues and providing recognition-based forms of emancipation (Aradau, 2004).

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Polarisation is a key development, if not outright threat, to contemporary democratic systems. While this polarisation takes many forms, it shares some key features that are important to consider both in the light of the role that new media has as a site for this polarisation, but also how this polarisation feeds into securitising issues around the democratic process. This polarisation takes on a multitude of concerns and issues being structured in an “us and them”: dynamic (McCoy et al., 2018). Democratic rivalry is nothing new—the left/right conflict based around social class borrowed heavily from the “us and them” Marxist dichotomy of the bourgeoisie vs the proletariat. What makes contemporary forms of polarisation different is that it has become difficult to measure using the traditional left/right political spectrum (McCoy et al., 2018). New media is often blamed for this polarisation; however, the reality remains far more complex. Studies have found that social media is not the root cause of polarisation, but can exasperate it (Barrett et al., 2021). Thus, social media itself also should not be considered as something that sits separately from the broader material, political, social and economic conditions within a specific context at a specific moment. Here, social media is perhaps the best viewed as a facilitator of polarisation and not the cause (Bavel et al., 2021). Much has also been said within these questions of polarisation regarding echo chambers and the dangers of new media technologies undermining democracy because individuals become stuck in bubbles of “non truth”. Thus to a degree there is a conventional wisdom of the “echo chamber” of social media where individuals interact with, and indeed are directed to, content that agrees with their existing political position and thus fosters political polarisation (Sunstein, 2018). Again, this is more complex. While echo chambers do exist and individuals do seek out and consume content they agree with, it is not as simple as a naïve assumption that being exposed to content they do not agree with softens their stance. Rather, it is also the case that polarisation can be exacerbated by exposure to social media content you disagree with (Bail et al., 2018). This goes against earlier findings that the dominant tendency is to ignore information that is ideologically unpleasant (Meehan, 1988, p. 339). To complicate this picture, the past two decades have seen the rise of “competitive authoritarianism” and hybrid regimes that combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way, 2002). Previously viewed optimistically as a transitional phase to more “complete” forms of democracy have either remained hybrid, or moved in

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a more authoritarian direction (Levitsky & Way, 2002). Scholars have argued that a key measure that hybrid regimes fall down on is “political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom to criticize the government without reprisal, are broadly protected” (Levitsky & Way, 2002, p. 53). As such, there are important means by which these forms of expression are no longer limited to “traditional” forms of national media which governments found more straightforward to control and manipulate such as television networks and newspapers. Social media dovetails with existing aspects of democracy. Thus, it is important here to question the novelty of the new media context when it comes to democracy. It is important to consider then in what ways are developments actually “new” in the sense on the unprecedented changes that are so often announced in popular discourses, versus modifications to existing trends. An example of this is in the established importance of freedom of association in democracy (Auger, 2013). Thus, new media here gives individuals new forms of association not possible before—such as immediate transnational contact. Another example of this is the changes to the relationship between democratic elites and their audiences, where “spokespeople are no longer forced to rely on their relationships with media gate keepers” (Kent, 2013, p. 337) as they can directly go to Twitter with thoughts and statements, a trend immortalised by Donald Trump. However, civil society, an important non-state aspect of democracy, is also active in a new media context. It is important to consider that from the inception of democracy, technology and democracy are intertwined— in contexts like the USA the printing press played a central role (Meehan, 1988, p. 339). So it is important to consider then how democracy then is not “threatened” by the “rise” of technology, but rather was only able to rise and evolve in the nation state-based forms that are so familiar precisely because of the evolution of technologies. For example, the much venerated “imagined community” (Anderson, 2006) of the nation state, a basic idea upon which national suffrage can occur, arguably was only able to evolve due to the technologies (printing press, railways to transport newspapers before they were out of date) which had evolved at the time. In the same way that these technologies also afforded anti-state, anti-systemic movement, such as Marxist revolutionaries, the ability to produce pamphlets and transport across previously unthinkable distances, so do new media technologies, also give violent and extremist voices their

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platforms. However, the field remains somewhat limited by the limits of the scholarship which often are limited in the scope of their empirical case studies. Most polarisation discussions about social media draw on empirics from the US context and thus the ability to generalise are limited (Barberá, 2020). Social media becomes an important place for non-profit organisations to interact with audiences—but it highlights how the dynamics of different platforms facilitate this to occur in different ways (Auger, 2013). Here the varying structural and audience dynamics of different platforms necessitate and enable different forms of communication. Here Twitter is used to thank, Facebook to engage and YouTube for elite oneway discourse (Auger, 2013). Two things here become important. Firstly, there is no one way in which new media acts in a particular discursive environment as the platforms themselves are diverse and work in very different ways and complicates the simple and basic one way assertions often made about the effect of these technologies on democracy specifically, and the political and social world more broadly. It is important to consider the initial utopian optimism that greeted or created the development of new media technologies in its historical context, where smart phones, apps and video and image-based social networks were close to unimaginable. The rationale at this time was that, in having access to the internet, “people would have the opportunity to obtain more and better information” (Kent, 2001; Meehan, 1988). This observation was structured around “web 1.0” where social networks, user-generated content and image and video heavy content were still not something considered possible given the end of twentieth-century technologies. However, this does not mean that these observations are completely out of touch with today’s realities, as social media itself was greeted with similar, if naïve, understandings of individuals and information that the increase in information exchange facilitated by social media would enable emancipation from totalitarian authoritarian regimes. Social media, and the increased ability of individuals to generate their own content, hugely diversifies further this already diverse media landscape. The rationale here was that the internet facilitated individuals to gain real-time information from a number of diffuse sources (Meehan, 1988, p. 339). Thus, when the web evolved and new media technologies were technologically possible by more powerful, increasingly portable, computing power and faster data speeds, a further round

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of naïve assumptions that this would somehow be humanities’ salvation occurred. Here it was initially thought that social media would be the “liberation technology” that would democratise communication and enable people to communicate freely and transnationally and confront authoritarian regimes (Persily & Tucker, 2020, p. 1). While this had some empirical substance, as with many political tools it is not only the “good guys” that can use them for “good causes”. One has to consider within this the coercive, financial, infrastructural and organisational advantages established organisations, such as states, have over anti-systemic movements or even established civil society organisations. This significantly advantages authoritarian regimes who are willing and able to deploy these advantages to censure social media content. These trends then necessitated a shift in explanations about the relationships between democracy and new media, and soon explanations centred around the manipulation of this form of technology by authoritarian regimes, bots and targeted advertising to promote populism (Persily & Tucker, 2020). This broader trend can be seen historically as a wave of initial optimism of social media being a space where information is democratised giving way to concerns about erosion of democracy by misinformation (Guess & Lyons, 2020, p. 10). Dipping one’s toe into the question of disinformation means opening a can of worms that could very well fill an entire volume. It is thus fair to say that questions of misinformation, disinformation and fake news are extremely complex from a definitional point of view on social media with the terms “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “propaganda” that are sometimes used interchangeably, with shifting and overlapping definitions” (Guess & Lyons, 2020, p. 10). This activity importantly does not simply occur in a vacuum. Rather it is intertwined with the political economy of online media and the fact that fake news can also be produced and problematic for profit—with right wing fake news proving more profitable than left wing fake news (Silverman et al., 2018). Here misinformation networks emerge that link to each other and constitute online communities, who then use mainstream social media websites to spread conspiracy theories to larger groups of people and seed content for journalists (Lewis & Marwick, 2017). A new strata of security elites emerge in this landscape who are not only totally disparate from the state elite structure, but often exist because of their direct opposition to the state, its structures and the very notion of elite focused authority in security discussions. Thus, they situate the state

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elite as not being able to represent, or respond to, the security concerns of “the people” owing to their divergent interests, and or complicity in fostering forms of insecurity due to their liberal politics. However, while they would not admit this freely, they also diverge from the “vernacular” security non-elite prominent voices because they are no longer rooted in the everyday in the same way (although they would argue that they are!). Thus, this requires us to consider not only the often discussed concerns about the audience and the changing role of audiences in social media security debates, but also the emergence of new forms of elites in these discussions as social media does not rely solely on individuals (names or nameless) to discuss threats, nor simply on bots to spread content, but also on a new strata on non-elite elites.

6.3

Investigating Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age

As discussed above, a range of literature has emerged that discusses social media as an important place where questions of democracy, democratisation and political freedoms are raised, contested and unsettled with quite mixed results. A key take-home here is that social media is neither the panacea for liberation against a range of political ills, such as authoritarian regimes, corruption and oppression as was initially hoped, however, nor is it completely the preserve of alt-right voices that would like to increase polarisation and push conspiracy theories. The reality is far more complex and nuanced and like many aspects of the intersection between social media and security covered in this book, it is difficult to make sweeping generalisations. Indeed, the online world of social interactions is as complex, multifaceted and at times counter intuitive as the offline social world. That said that are some important implications for democracy presented by social media platforms and the flows of information that emerge online. Both examples presented in this chapter are examples of “hashtag” campaigns that use the symbol “#” to join the users’ tweets to a specific campaign. From a discursive security perspective, this is important because it demonstrates how users attempt to not only create discourses, but seek to use indexing functions of social media to connect their content to a larger body of content (Bernard, 2019). Thus, when we consider the frequent calls by critical security scholars for the decentralisation of the security discussion away from elites to those previously marginalised

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in the security discussion (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018), the ability of those with non-elite voices to connect their output to a broader discussion via a hashtag raises some important questions about the simplistic elite/non-elite binary in critical security studies. The first example here demonstrates the dangers established which democratic systems face when their existing legal frameworks around elections are rendered unfit for purpose in the social media era. The French presidential election of 2017 was important here because it exposed the vulnerability of French election laws that include a “media blackout” period that bans reporting on the campaign for 48 hours before the final second round vote. This was exploited by Russian hackers in an attempt at election meddling by dumping a cache of hacked emails from the centre right presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron (Vilmer, 2019). However, this example goes further than situating #MacronLeaks as a classic “hack and leak” operation because by analysing social media we can go further and see how this “hack and leak” is constructed on social media, in a context where French voters could not turn to their domestic media outlets. The coverage on Twitter is dominated by anti-Macron sentiment that delves into anti-semitic conspiracy theories, connecting Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France and refutes Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the critical discursive turn in security studies enables us to go further in examining how the social media environment can construct democracies, and indeed direct threats to them, in connection with other key themes in contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism. The second example shines a light on something quite different in terms of security and democracy. This is through a hashtag that promotes voter abstention. This points to a larger question about the intersection of security and democracy in that a key existential threat to contemporary democratic system does not come simply from the “dramatic” external interventions of rogue states or hacking groups, but from within in terms of the withering of the democratic process through increasing rates of voter abstention that has received much attention (Gray & Caul, 2000; Jackman, 1987; Lewis-Beck & Lockerbie, 1989; Norris, 2002; Solijonov, 2016). Within this, examining social media discourses of abstention shines some important light on political distrust. If trust in institutions is an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018), the trends in political distrust away from particular

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politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019) is a dangerous development. Within the discussion of non-participation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai, distrust in the French media and in the broader political system at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge that demonstrate the way that discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014). 6.3.1

Social Media, Security, Democracy and Election Meddling

The #MacronLeaks hashtag emerged in the context of the 2017 French presidential election campaign’s second and final round of voting that includes only two candidates and funnels French votes to either of the two candidates. The French system contains a peculiar, if not completely unique, quirk in the form of a media blackout period prior to the final vote—a feature in different forms of the systems in Ireland, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Spain and the UK. The specifics of the French blackout period cover 44 hours prior to the final vote where the media, politicians and even private citizens are supposed to refrain from broadcasting vote-related material (Conseil Constitutionnel, 2017). Examining this from the position of critical security studies, this opens up an interesting situation where the state in fact explicitly prevents political and security elites from discussing the democratic process. Social media has the opportunity to make an important intervention into this discursive gap. Traditional media sources and politicians on the French scene have been both historically compliant with this black out and it has held firm and has not resulted in significant problems for the political process. However, the 2017 election demonstrated how vulnerable this discursive gap made the French system from attempts to meddle from outside of France precisely because it removed the key actors who construct the French political field—i.e. the president, the opposition and the media, from the ability to contribute to the debate when attempts were made online to meddle in the election. It is important to understand the broader context even within this specific example because a mis-/disinformation campaign began against Macron prior to the evening of the election (Vilmer, 2019). Rather, a range of sources, some Russian and some on the American alt-right sought to undermine and discredit Macron from the moment he became

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a front runner in the wake of the corruption scandal that engulfed, and effectively destroyed the campaign of, previous favourite Francois Fillon (Vilmer, 2019, p. 4). It is important and interesting to note that the Russian sources did not create and spread fake news per se, but instead used selective quotes of partisan sources: “rarely do they create strictly fake content – and this is another reason to reject the term ‘fake news’ and to prefer the broader term ‘information manipulation’” (Vilmer, 2019, p. 5). The American alt-right used a quite different strategy in seeking to undermine Macron using memes which cast him as a candidate of the rich, a representative of Jewish global financial interests and someone likely to be sympathetic to Islamism in France (Harkinson, 2017). This was then followed up with the “aperitif” (Vilmer, 2019, p. 9) release of fake documents and a hashtag campaign “#MacronGate” that sought to sow rumours that Macron had secret businesses and bank accounts in Caribbean Islands (Vilmer, 2019, p. 9), a rumour that Macron had pre-empted with public statements that such a rumour would be circulated. The run up to the data leak at the centre of #MacronLeaks included a range of phishing attempts against Macron’s staff, using official looking emails and sign in pages to try and capture Microsoft OneDrive and Gmail passwords for his close campaign associates (Vilmer, 2019). These attempts were successful on a number of occasions and resulted in a data leak. An important aspect of this was the timing of the leak to provide maximum manipulation potential provided by the election blackout—the data was released only hours before the election blackout period started (Vilmer, 2019). This gave enough time for the press to report that there had been a leak, obviously stoking voters’ curiosity, but not giving enough time for journalists to sort through the vast quantity of data and produce reliable coverage of the event. Thus, social media enabled the previously unproblematic domestic election silence period to be manipulated internationally by external forces, putting French voters in a difficult position because while curious about the content of the data leak, could not go to domestic media outlets for reliable coverage. While the initial leak and creation of the hashtag “#MacronLeaks” was done by anglophone users in the USA (Vilmer, 2019, p. 13), Francophone “amplifiers”, some of which were supporters of Marine Le Pen’s far-right “national front”, and others from within the “French-speaking, pro-Russian online community” (Vilmer, 2019, p. 13). Thus, this process has been summarised as

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a classic “hack and leak” operation (Vilmer, 2019, p. 13) where data is captured and then leaked online. As presented here, this example is not primarily concerned with this process of “hack and leak” per se, but rather the discourses that emerge around the leak, especially given the specifics of the blackout situation where French voters could not go to established political or media outlets for information about the leak. It is clear from the introduction above that Twitter was a central part of both the leak and the emerging discourse, yet the studies on #MacronLea interrogate the discourses which surround the leak of information. Thus, there is a key critical security studies point to be made here as two key threads emerge out of #MacronLeaks that demonstrate the constructivist approach to security which the critical approach brings. Firstly, there are the mechanics of the leak itself, and indeed the content of the emails themselves, which actually did not reveal anything remotely scandalous (Vilmer, 2019), even though this could not be established straight away to voters. However, the second thread which emerges, which the context of this media blackout makes more interesting, is the construction of the leak, the way that efforts at creating suspicion around Macron translates into narratives on social media about the presidential candidate in a context where he is running against a farright candidate whose election would have radically changed the contours of European politics and democracy. Thus, it is important to consider in the uncertainty of a data leak how Macron, his candidacy and the French election are constructed. The first theme that is important in the narratives shared under the hashtag #MacronLeaks (Appendix 1) contains conspiracy theory and anti-systemic content. This extended to reports that the “real” damaging content of the #MacronLeaks files, of which there was none, was going to be censured by social media companies themselves, with a user claiming that Twitter was going to censure #MacronLeaks and replace it with a hashtag about football. Some narratives went further in their conspiracy-based content included using Macron’s time in finance and his association with banking, citing him as receiving protection because he is a “globalist” that once worked for Rothschild & Cie Banque. This is constructed as a negative for French politics, but also a reason why he is in the election race and also why he has support. However, this has a broader resonance given then frequent mentioning of the Rothschild family in anti-Semitic conspiracy

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theories (AJC, 2022). Thus, this hints at undermining French democracy, and the candidacy of Macron specifically, as something that is part of broader universe of anti-sematic “conspiracy fantasies” that claim the world is run by a global Jewish conspiracy (Allington & Joshi, 2020). The second most frequent theme which emerged was that of a range of anti-Macron sentiments that included a number of ways in which Macron was constructed as a negative candidate. These included allegations of drug use in his campaign team and alleged evidence of a French deputy dealing in crystal meth. However, narratives went further than this and connected anti-Macron messages to questions of terrorism and security. A thread within this connected Macron to terrorism, especially the wave of terror attacks that had hit France in the years prior to this election, including the Charlie Hebdo and Paris terror attacks in 2015. Here a separate security issue that is not directly linked to Macron is however brought into construct his candidacy in the context of the Macron Leaks event. Here, users comment about the emails demonstrating his communication with the “terror-funding Saudis” hinting that this is evidence that he would undermine French security: looks like globalist Macron, who will bring more terrorists to France, is tied to terror-funding Saudis #MacronLeaks If you want more poverty, more unemployment, more war and more terrorism, vote for Rothschild’s ild’s Neocon Fascist puppet Macron BREAKING: #MacronLeaks contain secret proposals that would lead to the islamisation of France and Europe

This goes further than simply arguing that Macron is a “sympathetic” to Muslims in France, but that he holds secret ambitions to “Islamise” France and that his “globalist” orientation means more immigration, from Muslim countries, and thus Islamise France by proxy. This is a common shorthand in conspiracy theories and alt-right rhetoric where calling someone a “globalist” denotes these connections to being pro-immigration, undermining local cultures and part of the “new imperialism” (Madalina, 2015). Additionally this taps into the “great replacement” vein of conspiracy theories that “whites” in Europe or the USA will be replaced by non-European populations because of mass immigration and falling white birth rates (Cosentino, 2020). Users innovated further, creating graphical memes pasting a smiling Macron onto the scenes of destruction in the Bataclan theatre after the

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attacks of November 2015 with a quote attributed to him saying “There is no French culture” which is only part of a broader quote. Thus, this tallies with the campaign waged prior to #MacronLeaks where “information manipulation” (Vilmer, 2019) is used by users in that they do not make up something that Macron says, but are rather very specific in the way that they edit and present a quote by him. The addition of the graphical dimension also connects this quote to an event and context outside of that of the quote itself. Thus, this seeks to connect Macron once again to questions of terrorism and security as a means to undermine his credibility as a candidate: #MacronLeaks Remember #Bataclan? #IslamicTerror is why a French Patriot leaked these docs on #Macron. NOT RUSSIANS! This shows that the broader process of terrorism and security bleeding into popular culture that has been demonstrates by critical security scholars (Holland, 2011; Jackson & Hall, 2016) also needs to be considered in the ways in which user-generated content on social media incorporates themes of terrorism in attempts to undermine democracy. Here, in the context where a direct terror attack did not occur in the run up to the final vote, terrorism is still brought in as a broader theme to discredit a candidate in the wake of this leak and make unfounded connections between him and terrorism. An important final theme to consider are the discussions of Russia that become frequent under the #MacronLeaks hashtag. This ranged from discussions around Cyrillic characters being found in the metadata of the leak documents. Additionally, users expressed a disbelief in Russian involvement, connecting this to broader debates in US politics: as it was with Trump, including “Russiadidit” nonsense Libtards are already blaming “Russian hackers” for the #MacronLeaks with absolutely no evidence at all don’t buy into the narrative that the #MacronLeaks are part of a Russian plot. Hey, same excuse as #CrookedHilary…REAL documents mixed in with FAKE….muh Russia !

However, other users commented on the Russian involvement and how it may actually have helped Macron, even if at this early stage neither this could have been confirmed:

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#MacronLeaks The FN and the Russians have succeeded in a magnificent task: confirming the honesty of Macron. Thank you for your cooperation

Thus here, relating to the observation that misinformation around Macron as a candidate began prior to #MacronLeaks (Vilmer, 2019), we can see it continued here and draw in the themes of the US altright in promoting a disbelief in Russian hacking operations, as well as connecting Macron and the Macron leaks operation of Hilary Clinton to situate Macron as part of the same corrupt political class. An important take-home message here for discussions of “hack and leak” election meddling attempts is to not only concentrate on the leak itself—i.e. the information that is captured and the contents of it, but the way in which social media offers a broader forum for the discussion and construction of the leak. From the results seen above, we can see how the social media sphere can securitise an information leak that does not even contain any damaging information as part of attempts to sow uncertainty. While this is not something that can be sustained for the long term, as sooner or later the contents of the information leaked while be established and thus the lack of damaging content will also be established, it is important in specific short-term contexts such as that demonstrated by the French election blackout period that specifically makes certain systems vulnerable at certain points. 6.3.2

Social Media, Security, Democracy and Abstention

The second example here examines this question of democracy, security and social media through the question of abstention under the hashtag #SansMoiLe7Mai (Appendix 2). Voter abstention, and declining participation in elections, has been considered a significant threat to democracies (Dreyer & Bauer, 2019; Rosema, 2007). Here, there have been important discussions about how increased polarisation in systems is exasperated by the abstention of moderate voters (Dreyer & Bauer, 2019). During the 2017 French presidential election, a hashtag emerged #SansMoi7Mai that enabled users to connect their comments about abstention in the vote to the broader debate about not wanting to choose between the two remaining candidates—centrist Emmanuel Macron, and far-right populist, Marine Le Pen, and abstention more generally. Abstention per se, while being argued as being damaging to the health of democracy, is this only one aspect of the means by which democracy is

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undermined in this context on social media. This is because a key theme in how the hashtag emerges are questions of political distrust. Political distrust is important from a security perspective for two reasons. Trust in politics is a central question in politics and security. It is well established that trust in public institutions is crucial for “building peaceful and inclusive societies” (Perry, 2021, p. 1). In addition “citizens who trust politics tend to feel less at risk and are less likely to commit illegal acts” (van der Does, 2018, p. 1). Thus from the perspective of an ontological understanding of security (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017; Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017; Giddens, 1984; Rumelili, 2015), a democratic self-understanding of trustworthiness is a key aspect of citizens feeling secure. Thus, a threat to this, real or imagined, will feed into a sense of insecurity. Secondly, this takes on a new dimension in the evolution of political trust in the past decade. A dangerous process has been identified for the security of democratic systems because political distrust has been theorised as changing in the past decade—i.e. moving from distrust of particular parties or candidates to distrust of the political system as a whole (Bertsou, 2019). This thus undermines the foundation of democracy, that the system is above the fray of competitive politics. Examining the discussion of the French presidential elections under the banner of the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai offers insights into how this distrust is constructed on social media. The largest theme that emerged in the analysis of this hashtag was one of political distrust of the system, beyond simply that of the candidates there were offered. A key aspect of this construction of distrust was discussions of the system as one that perpetuates privilege of a small elite and manipulates the masses to accept an unjust status quo. This takes two important forms when considering how a distrust in the system emerges. Firstly, there is a question of media manipulation and how this plays into the choice given between two candidates. This draws heavily on themes of media manipulation and a lack of media neutrality. This is a common theme in conspiracy theories that the media is corrupt and serves elite interests and not those of the people (Albertson & Guiler, 2020; Cosentino, 2020). In the context of the 2017 presidential election, this is constructed as being biased towards Macron:

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But Macron must talk about Marine Le Pen, they have to stop the proMacron propaganda #SansMoiLe7Mai #MediaManipulation But what if you talk about the oligarchy that backs Macron. Press neutrality?

But also in more general terms about the idea of a media dictatorship in France: It’s better to think about the dictatorship of the media and the journalists

Thus, here the media is manipulated to be behind the candidate that serves the broader interests of the “corrupt elite”. This is consistent with the broader structures of conspiracy theories which frequently contain a simplistic division of the world into a good “us” and an evil “them” (Oliver & Wood, 2014). Thus, these promote paranoia and the distrust of elites (Uscinski, 2018) as the elites are the vanguard of those evil forces that seek to subdue “good” masses. This same sentiment features in the second key theme that emerges which demonstrates this distrust of the system in situating Macron and the election more generally as delivering a candidate that not only supports the “corrupt” status quo, but that is tied to international finance and the oligarchy: Don’t need #MacronLeaks to know that #EnMarche is a huge fraud and at the service of the oligarchy Trusting France to a banker is like trusting a wine seller to an alcoholic! Emmanuel Macron, he was born in a bank, the incestuous fruit of the powers of media and finance

Thus, here the democratic process, and voting within it, are constructed as a direct challenge to what tweets described as a flawed system in which privilege is perpetuated, where the same politicians remain in place and the media manipulate the masses to maintain the status quo. Here examining social media demonstrates the ways in which the online sphere constructs this new form of political distrust that situates the system itself as the site of distrust and not a particular candidate.

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6.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age The chapter began with some observations about the historical evolution of the relationship between democracy and security. This is important because it gives a context against which to consider what is new, and indeed how these new phenomena act within the broader political and social landscape. It is a central contention of this book that in popular discourse both the magnitude and novelty of anything new media related are often overstated and under-explained. Thus, it is important to consider that democracy as an ideology has been an ingredient in conflict since at least the Cold War rivalry between the USA and the USSR (Pee & Schmidli, 2018). This was in often paradoxical ways, with the USA championing and protecting democracy at home, for example with its obsession with “reds under the bed” (Arp & Guilfoy, 2017) while at the same time combatting communist influence abroad by supporting right wing dictatorships in its backyard of Latin America (Schmitz, 2006). We experience perhaps an anomaly in the postCold War period where democracy emerged as the normatively most powerful global ideology that the USA sought to export by force to places like Iraq (Robinson, 2006). However, this chapter has sought to contribute to the broader understandings of democracy and security that arise in the social media era. Within this, it sought to examine and to contextualise two quite different ways that democracy, security and social media intersect. The first example sought to make the case that to understand “hack and leak” operations one needs to examine not only the lead itself, but also the way that constructivist understandings of security, so central to the critical school, can offer insights into the broader context of how the leak is constructed. Importantly, this example shows that even when a leak contains no damaging information, it can be constructed as demonstrating a range of problematic political dimensions to a candidate. Examining the coverage on Twitter is dominated by anti-Macron sentiment that delve into anti-semitic conspiracy theories, connect Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France and refute Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the critical discursive turn in the security studies enables us to go furthering in examining how the social media environment can construct democracies, and indeed direct threats

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to them, in connection with other key themes in contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism. The second examples examine voter abstention under #SansMoi7Mai that highlights how political distrust is constructed on social media. Thus, abstention is not only an act in a passive sense, but by examining social media one can begin to understand the ways that new forms of political distrust feed into ontologically insecure construction of democracy and democratic systems. The social media discourses of abstention analysed here are centred on themes of political distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018). However, this becomes problematic by the contemporary trends in political distrust away from particular politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019) which is a dangerous development. Within the discussion of non-participation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai, distrust in the French media and in the broader political system as at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge that demonstrate the way that discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014). Here social media demonstrates some important and highly dynamic intersections with questions of security. Indeed, liberal democracies have received some recent attention for their disparities between providing different levels of security to different ethnic groups in society, for example with blacks being disproportionately affected by police violence (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020), or indeed how democratic politics can possible de-securitise (Aradau, 2004). Democracy and social media has also received attention for the paradoxical relationship between emancipation, commodification and control (Allmer, 2015; Dencik & Leistert, 2015). The two examples here open up the possibilities for a wider reaching engagement between constructivist understandings of security and a range of aspects of democracy.

Appendices Appendix 1 #MacronLeaks generated 15,346 tweets from the Twitter API, and a randomised 10% sample was coded in detail:

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Theme

Description

Percentage

Conspiracy theory/anti-systemic

Presented the leak as occurring in the context of conspiracies or expressed anti-systemic sentiments Expressed anti-Macron sentiments Neutral retweets of links Referenced the French legal press blackout Referenced Russian involvement Referenced WikiLeaks Described the leak in humorous terms Linked to expert analysis Referenced anti Marine Le Pen bias of mainstream media/politics Expressed pro-Macron sentiments References USA involvement or politics

18

Anti-Macron Neutral Press Blackout Russia WikiLeaks Humour Analysis Anti-Marine Le Pen bias Pro-Macron USA

17 14 12 10 8 7 5 4 3 2

Appendix 2 16,525 tweets containing the hashtag “#SansMoile7Mai” (collected from May 30th at 9 pm through June 18th at 9 pm) using the Twitter free API. A 5% sample was coded in detail: Theme

Description

Percentage (%)

Anti-system

Manipulation by the media and politicians, no change in the political scene Macron as a continuation of the system and product of the oligarchy and neoliberalism The hashtag was originated by the Insoumis (the “un-submissive”), support shown to Jean-Luc Mélenchon Dignity/shame in voting, free will, freedom of thought Neither Macron nor Le Pen can be considered as an option Call to vote, as a responsible act for the sake of democracy Comments against the FN in general

20.3

Anti-Macron France Insoumise

Values Ni–Ni Anti-abstention Anti-FN

14.4 14.2

10 7.1 6.7 2.5

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McCoy, J. et al. (2018). Polarization and the global crisis of democracy: Common patterns, dynamics, and pernicious consequences for democratic polities. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(1), 16–42. McCoy, J., & Press, B. (2022). What happens when democracies become perniciously polarized? Available from: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/ 01/18/what-happens-when-democracies-become-perniciously-polarized-pub86190 (Accessed 20 May 2022). Meehan, E. R. (1988). Technical capability versus corporate imperatives: Toward a political economy of cable television and information diversity. In V. Mosco & J. Wasco (Eds.), The political economy of information. p. Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing political activism. Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, E. (2017). How Jokes won the election. Available from: https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/how-jokes-won-the-election (Accessed 26 December 2018). Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014). Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952–966. O’Mahony, T. P. (1974). The press and democracy. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 63(249), 47–58. Pee, R., & Schmidli, W. M. (2018). The reagan administration, the cold war, and the transition to democracy promotion. Springer. Perry, J. (2021). Trust in public institutions: Trends and implications for economic security | DISD. Available from: https://www.un.org/development/desa/ dspd/2021/07/trust-public-institutions/ (Accessed 17 August 2022). Persily, N., & Tucker, J. A. (2020). Introduction. In Social media and democracy, the state of the field and prospects for reform (pp. 1–9). Cambridge University Press. Popper, K. (1962). Google-books-ID: _M_E5QczOBAC. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Przeworski, A. (1999). Minimalist conception of democracy: A defense. Defining Democracy, 6. Robinson, W. I. (2006). What to expect from US “democracy promotion” in Iraq. New Political Science, 26(3), 441–447. Rosema, M. (2007). Low turnout: Threat to democracy or blessing in disguise? Consequences of citizens’ varying tendencies to vote. Electoral Studies, 26(3), 612–623. Rumelili, B. (2015). Identity and desecuritisation: The pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security. Journal of International Relations and Development, 18, 52–74. Schmitz, D. F. (2006). Google-books-ID: 1EV440YU6toC. The United States and right-wing dictatorships, 1965–1989. Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, J. A. (1942). Google-books-ID: QmSLAgAAQBAJ . Routledge.

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Silverman, C. et al. (2018). Macedonia’s Pro-Trump fake news industry had American links, and is under investigation for possible Russia ties. Available from: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/american-con servatives-fake-news-macedonia-paris-wade-libert (Accessed 13 January 2022). Solijonov, A. (2016). Voter turnout trends around the world | International IDEA. Available from: https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/voterturnout-trends-around-world (Accessed 27 April 2020). Sunstein, C. R. (2018). Republic.com 2.0. Princeton University Press. Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.). (2018). Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them. Oxford University Press. Vilmer, J.-B. J. (2019). The “macron leaks” operation, p. 58.

CHAPTER 7

Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age

7.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age When the seminar works of the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) argued for the broadening of security studies to include questions of “identity,” they very much had the specific context of the end of Cold War, ethnic conflicts of the post-communist space in mind. As we have seen more recently with the rise of the so-called Islamic State and the rise of protest movements across the world around calls for social justice for racial minorities, “identity” has taken a number of important twists and turns when it relates to questions of security. In particular, the killing of George Floyd in the USA demonstrates how social media has come to be centre stage in these broader discussions of identity and security. Floyd’s death sparked protests all over the world. This international movement for racial and social justice mobilised a diverse set of communities across the globe, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its crystallisation around a “hashtag” of #blacklivesmatter demonstrated how social media is central to ongoing debates about identity in the contemporary world. However, this is not unique to the events of 2020, as early as 2014 in the wake of the trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin caused #BlackLivesMatter to trend on Twitter that discussed demonstrations occurring in response to the killing (Mourão & Brown, 2022).

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This is important because while the critical security studies literature accounts for questions of identity, it does not go far enough to consider the wide range of ways in which identity becomes important in the social media context. The first example here demonstrates how identity and security become entangled in the context of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France. Here, with the co-occurring hashtags #JeSuisCharlie and #JeSuisAhmed, social media enabled a debate to take place about French Muslim identity and broader discussions of national identity as a whole. This is important as social media offered a context that enabled such debates, often dominated by narratives about Muslims not belonging, to take place. Additionally, the specifics here, of Ahmed dying as a responder to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, offers an important lens into a practical real-world example of how Muslims lay down their lives for the values of the French republic, which they are often discussed as being against, or apart from (Fredette, 2014). Users take this situation and connect it directly to Ahmed dying in the service of France, and being a defender of the free speech values in the context of them being attacked by jihadists in Paris. The examples here from the UK demonstrates that way that not only do security debates become internationalised on social media, but they do so within a context of the contested nature of Muslim identity and its broader place in the global context. The two examples also demonstrate something that critical security studies needs to consider when approaching questions of social media in what a notion of security elite means in the social media context. Both users presented here become important in the debates and in a sense could be considered “elites”, but this is not only unpredictable, but also extremely fleeting and ephemeral. As such, it is difficult to reproduce the notion of elites when it comes to security speech on social media. Additionally, with both discussion of British security situations, and the role of Muslims within them, the debate can become highly decontextualised and become about the more general questions of Islam and terrorism and thus identity and security debates on social media do not always result in nuanced and structured discussions. Thus, while it can be argued that social media makes security debates more diffuse, and can offer users an albeit “thin” kind of discursive emancipation, as they can contribute, and even become elite in debates about security and identity, this process is complex and multifaceted.

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7.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age A range of literature requires consultation when it comes to considering questions of identity debates on social media and how they patch to critical security studies literature. Firstly, it is important to break down the disciplinary boundaries (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) to consider the range of ways that sociology can offer insights into identity and identity formation as this supports the broader discussions of how identity can intersect with social media and security. Moving on from this, it is important to consider the way that the security literature has considered identities in international relations and importantly to highlight that the use of the term “identity” is not limited to the individuals or groups but to a range of international relations actors, including states. This also needs to consider the range of critiques of identity and international relations including those which emerge from decolonial perspectives on the discipline. When the Copenhagen school argued that post-Cold War security studies should consider “identity” an emergent threat category (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 2) likely in their mind were the simmering ethnic tensions and resulting civil wars in places like the former Yugoslavia and not the broader identity conflicts of the early twenty-first century. They could not have foreseen the range of means through which identity and security would become intertwined in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. The scholarship correctly highlights the “deeply intertwined nature of identity and security” (Rumelili, 2015, p. 71). Before diving headlong into the ways in which identity has been discussed in the specific field of IR and international security, it is worth considering the broader questions of identity as a much larger social science discussion. Critical security studies has made an important point to broaden the disciplinary approaches to security (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018), and as such, spending some time on the interdisciplinary conceptualisations of identity is worthwhile. Opening up a discussion of identity is fraught with issues that go beyond recent discussions of a resurgence of identity politics let alone the pitched battle of the so-called culture wars (Hartman, 2019). It has long been argued that the very conceptual use of the term identity is both redundant. Some two decades ago, scholars already saw that identity can mean too much, too little and thus owing to its inherent ambiguity “nothing at all” (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). In all honestly, this critique

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is difficult to dispute, yet at the same time fails to capture the real-world salience, and indeed the much asserted growing real-world salience, of identity concerns as well as the durability of identity in a range of political, social and geographical grievances and concerns. A discussion emerges here about the ontological nature of categories. Are they categories of real-world practice, with lay/folk/everyday elements, or sharp scientific categories of analysis? (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Even here there is significant intersubjectivity that barely enables us to move forward from the identity quagmire. Any attempt to situate any identity as an “objective” sharp scientific category loses the diversity and plurality inherent in the social world, and likewise a concentration on the “subjective” diversity of these categories loses the important mobilising characteristics that enable forms of often life-threatening collective action that happen even in the face of plurality and disagreement. However, an important point remains on about the pitfalls of “essentialism”. This is the belief that social categories have “an underlying reality or true nature…that gives an object its identity” (Gelman, 2003). Such assumptions have been rightly highlighted as highly problematic when applied to human subjects, through the “attribution of certain characteristics to everyone subsumed within a particular category” (Phillips, 2010). This kind of thinking regarding the “orient” was the crux of Said’s “orientalism” where it was argued that through a range of means the Orient was constructed as homogeneously backwards and savage (Said, 1978). If identity is diverse and dynamic, sociology offers some important means by which we can consider its structure and dynamics. Social boundary theory has attempted to highlight and structure these key changes. Thus, social boundary theory does a lot to attempt to not just identify a dynamism in identity, but goes further in seeking to identify and theorise the mechanisms through which this dynamism shapes socially relevant identity structures. As a means to begin to think about how sociologists can illuminate this process, the well-developed literature on boundary making (Alba, 2005; Anderson, 2006; Bhabha, 2006) offers significant insights. The most accessible of this theoretical tradition offers a dichotomy for diaspora identity where boundaries are “brightened” or “blurred” (Alba, 2005), for Alba, a “bright” boundary where there is “no ambiguity in the location of individuals with respect to it” (Alba, 2005, p. 24). As such, through processes of social construction this is a boundary that is sharp, concrete and difficult for an individual to transgress. However, Alba (2005) also considers there to be “blurred”

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boundaries—where the relationship across the boundary is ambiguous. Here, “individuals are seen as simultaneously members of the groups on both sides of the boundary” (Alba, 2005, p. 25). So here, a boundary exists, but the management of belonging across exists in its relational sense as far more fluid. However, while clearly offering some important insights, a simplistic dichotomy can never sufficiently get at the complex social realities of identity formation and construction as identity as construction is far more complex. A more complex and nuanced account of boundary making can be found in Tilly’s work (Tilly, 2004). The argument goes that social boundaries are important because they separate “us from them” (Tilly, 2004, p. 211). Within this, a distinction is made between two sets of mechanisms—the first that “participate boundary change” and the second which “constitute boundary change” (Tilly, 2004, p. 211). This dynamism is identified and problematised from a constructivist standpoint with the juxtaposition that some groups make claims about being a distinctive people, and thus deserving of certain kinds of distinctive rights (to a territory, autonomy, cultural recognition) while other groups that could make such claims either do so intermittently (Tilly, 2004, p. 212), or never at all. This identity and boundary making is based on more than “objective” realities of distinct social characteristics but on relational processes in the social world. This pre-occupation of the diversity and dynamic nature of identity from below highlights some of the key shortcomings of many international relations perspectives on identity. From an international relations perspective, it has historically been pre-occupied with “concerns with relations between and among great powers in the international system” (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006, p. 329) with the state as the central unit of analysis. Thus, it should be no surprise that identity has also been applied at this level of organisation. Important studies have highlighted both how ontological state identities are forged insometimes hostile relations with other states (Mitzen, 2006). History is important in the securitisation of identity—and acts as a “facilitating condition” of securitisation (Jutila, 2006). Thus, the notion of an “ontological” state identity, bound up in self-understanding and threat to this notion of self, is vital in considering the relationship at the state level of identity and security (Mitzen, 2006). These identities are importantly not static and this self-understanding and resulting senses of security and/or insecurity must be constantly reproduced through social relations (Mitzen, 2006, p. 348). Here, “security seeking is a social practice that implicates identity” (Mitzen, 2006, p. 363)

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and thus international relations and security studies recognise the importance of relational processes in identity construction. This is important to consider in the context of social media, which is effectively one avenue where this reproduction, in a discursive sense, takes place. State identities in this sense are also bound up with the nature of their political systems, with the emergence in some contexts of democratic identities (McDonald, 2008). This process of security identities also plays out at the intersection of states and supra-state levels of organisation, with the European Union playing an important role in defining national security identities (Rieker, 2005). Group identities on a more human scale have also received considerable attention from critical security scholars. Situating minorities with the Copenhagen school framework, Roe (2012) argues that a degree of securitisation is inherent in a group identity, by identifying a notion of a particular group set apart from the majority. Drilling down a little deeper, this self-other dichotomy important in defining post-Cold War identity debates (Mikail & Aytekin, 2016). This question of the self and other has found significant resonance in the debates around ontological security (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017; Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017; Giddens, 1984; Rumelili, 2015) which sets out a key area for the understanding of the role of identity in critical security debates as a function of self-understanding and how threats to this self-understanding—whether state, group or individual, cause a profound sense of insecurity. However, it is important not to see the onotological and physical as always distinct (Rumelili, 2015, p. 70). Rather, bringing the relational back into the equation, ontological security is a “political process that involves the naming of threats, deciding on the exception, and mobilising security actors” (Rumelili, 2015, p. 70). On the other hand, e-securitisation and self/other relations where the “removal of physical concerns has to be coupled with a reconfiguration of Self/Other relations that (re)institutes ontological security (Rumelili, 2015, p. 70). However this question around self/other and identity has received significant impetus in recent years with international security questions about minorities and in particular violence that minorities in liberal democracies can face. This tallies with broader critiques of critical security studies for being too narrowly focused when it comes to questions around identity. While critical security studies has called for the broadening of the field (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Buzan et al., 1997a, 1997b)

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that has placed emphasis on the discursive elements of the human experience, of which identity is an extremely central and important part, it has been critiqued for lacking the tools and nuances to fully get to grips with the complexities of identity (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020; Salter et al., 2019). This has also been considered in the emergent questions of the brooding of IR and security studies into non-textual, less traditional sources such as images. Images are also important places for the construction, and also displacement and subversion, of power relations (Dixit, 2014). It is important to interrogate the problematic relationship between those who visualise, and those who are visualised (Dixit, 2014). For example, in accounts of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, both Pakistan and Bin Laden are absent from the discussion and visualisation of this historic event (Dixit, 2014). Conceptualising on these questions has taken several waves of thought over time from the post-colonial turn (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006) to the current focus on “decoloniality” (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020). It is important to consider that security studies was traditionally constituted by “concerns with relations between and among great powers in the international system” (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006, p. 329). Critical security studies in its genesis barely challenged this structure, seeking to more bring the constructivist dimension to it than to challenge the basic underpinnings on the problematic. Interestingly, the post-9/11 undermined the underpinnings of this question because the existential threat to “security” came from a “transnational network enterprise” (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006, p. 329). Thinking about a decolonial lens, a key critique of international relations has been its limited scope. Because IR is primarily focused at the state level, there has been a reluctance to examine phenomena such as criminal justice and international solidarity movements (Fiona Adamson, 2020, p. 131) which thus then miss some key dynamics of the role that race plays in the organisation of the international system. A key dimension of the decolonial project is to bring in other vantage points into the examination of international questions—for example not only seeing intervention from the point of view of those who intervene, but from those in the states subject to intervention (Fiona Adamson, 2020, p. 131). Within this, power relations are critical: a decolonial lens on the field begins with the observation that entrenched and deeply rooted social and political hierarchies based on exclusionary

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practices shape both geographies and the production of knowledge , with particular attention to global hierarchies of race, as well as colonial histories. (Fiona Adamson, 2020, p. 131)

Decolonial approaches to security studies focus on “transforming structures rather than simply diversifying them” (Fiona Adamson, 2020, p. 132) and “provide an alternative to more “problem-solving” approaches to inclusion and exclusion” (Fiona Adamson, 2020, p. 132). This goes back to the deeper critique of modernity from the decolonial school of thought. Decolonial thinking and doing emerges from the sixteenth century onwards to resist the oppressive European logics projected onto the non-European world. Within this the polyvalent, noncapitalist world is replaced by the Western-dominated capitalist world of the twentieth century (Mignolo, 2011). This connects the twin developments of a capitalism, rooted in colonialism, where for the first time the surplus could be invested to make more surplus, and the epistemological developments in arts/science (Mignolo, 2011). However, like the broader calls for “emancipation” in the critical security studies literature (Wyn Jones, 1999), this vein of thought is not without its issues—not limited to a lack of a key vision to reshape the world nor an acknowledgement that pro-capitalist voices across the world would be quite hostile to being labelled as “victims” requiring “emancipation”. This does not mean that these broader debates are going to diminish anytime soon. A notion of “culture wars” has become prominent in the vernacular parlance around identity and both domestic and international politics in the past decade, while rising to prominence in public discourse in the past decade has much longer social, political and historical roots, into the twentieth century (Hartman, 2019). While some argued that the culture wars were somewhat trivial, and centred on a core of cultural issues at the expense of traditional, more structural, understandings of political mobilisation (Frank, 2004), here the rationale goes that a swing to anti-elitist conservatism occurs owing to cultural concerns that cause Americans to swing to the right and vote against their economic interests owing to concerns about cultural issues, including gay rights and abortion (Frank, 2004). This is relevant here because much of this “war” is discursive—and indeed a portion of this discourse takes place on social media (Davis, 2019). While it is clear that “social media platforms have a growing importance in our lives” (Gündüz, 2017, p. 85) and offer a range of ways

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to articulate our position in “virtual and physical social life” (Gündüz, 2017), but the range of ways that this takes place is vast. A range of literature has emerged regarding social media and a range of identity discussions. Some of these have nothing per se to do with security, in terms of a range of aspects of social media such as consumer behaviour and identity (Wang, 2017), sport identity (Schmalz et al., 2015) and approaches to tackling cyber bullying (Oksanen et al., 2020). This is important to consider because not only is “identity” something that individuals engage in both for a range of reasons, but also drawing on an extremely large repertoire of symbolic and discursive resources. Drilling deeper, social media presents opportunities for a range of approaches to different identities to be interrogated—such as gender identity and lexical variation (Bamman et al., 2014) and gender and identity construction on social media during the “slut walk” campaigns (Cook & Hasmath, 2014). Political identities have also been studied, in particular the means by which social media and individualised politics mean individuals who take part in online protest causes the use of individual, instead of collective, action frames (Bennett, 2012). The political identity discussions have received interesting and unexpected attention for a range of ways in which social media and politics intersect. Importantly, as a key theme that re-emerges in this book, we should expect the unexpected when we consider constructions of security and politics on Twitter—by the nature of its user-generated content, politics, security and identity can be subverted, challenged, contorted and re-imagined drawing in unexpected and paradoxical themes. An example of this is the political identity created with pre-modern historical symbols and narratives during the Brexit referendum campaign (Bonacchi et al., 2018) that did not feature in the broader public discourse on the subject of Brexit. This demonstrates the unexpected nature of how user-generated discourses and content play into social media and politics. Perhaps more expected is the literature which examines the role of social media in facilitating political polarisation and false information that effect individuals’ political and social identities (Tucker et al., 2018). In the US context, this produces “partisan” identities that are “generating intense hostility towards opposition partisans that encourages extreme tactics and undermines compromise and civility” (Tucker et al., 2018, p. 49). In addition to this, a range of scholarship has emerged on activist identity on social media (Gerbaudo & Treré, 2015; Milan, 2015) and also taking this question through the lens of analysing protest images (Gerbaudo, 2015) as

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social media offers the opportunity to generate graphical, audio and video content in addition to text. Text does still, however, play an important role in mediating identity on social media as it has been established that Muslim bloggers on Tumblr use the platform as a means to negotiate hybrid identities (Pennington, 2018). It is to this question of Muslim’ identity, in the context of security and social media that this chapter will use as empirical examples of how social media shapes identity and security.

7.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age It has now been established that security and identity have a range of overlapping concerns—from the scale of minority group identity (Roe, 2012), to the security identity of the state (Mitzen, 2006) and indeed to the level of international organisations and the identity shaped by the European Union (Rieker, 2005). However, clearly these are only one part of the broader story and taking on board the critical security studies’ recommendation to open up the disciplinary perspectives on international relations and security (Aradau et al., 2015; Bigo & McCluskey, 2018); identity and security become intertwined in some interesting and important ways by users using a range of themes. The empirics on this section seek to highlight two means by which this happens, examining very different contexts. Firstly, it examines questions around the police, identity and security in France through the lens of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Charlie Hebdo is an example of a mass social media campaign of solidarity, protest and in some cases xenophobia (An et al., 2016; Arceneaux, 2018; Giglietto & Lee, 2015) which posed significant questions to a range of identity concerns globally, and indeed locally within France. However, a parallel hashtag emerges in this context where instead of, or in addition to, attaching their discussion using a hashtag to “Charlie”, users attach their discussion via a hashtag to “Ahmed” a police officer killed during the attack. The resulting discussion which takes place brings in important themes to identity construction of Ahmed both as a Muslim police officer, but importantly a defender of both the French republic but also of key values such as freedom and speech and expression. The second example looks at a very different context of debates about Muslims in the UK on Twitter during two events— the Grenfell tower fire in 2017 and the Manchester bombing also in 2017. In different ways on Twitter, discussions of Muslims became important in both events and

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within this emerged influential users who internationalise discussions of Muslims identity on social media within the context of security. 7.3.1

Social Media, Security and National Identity on Twitter

To consider how the discussions of Ahmed on social media interface with questions of identity and security, it is important to consider the context. It is important here to consider the implications of looking at identity and security through the prism of a “hashtag” as this presents a specific way of examining social media debates. Hashtags use is recent: Twitter and Instagram introduced the use of hashtags in 2007 and 2010, respectively (Bernard, 2019). The hashtag, in part, can be seen as working as somewhat similar to the “keyword” used to index in a variety of contexts a quarter century or more ago (Bernard, 2019), but with a difference—the users, and not only the elites, can start, use, subvert and manipulate the hashtag and thus take part in the indexing. It is on “the threshold of text and metatext, and it draws the previously hidden steps of cataloguing and indexing out into the open” (Bernard, 2019, p. 3). It was these abilities that would only become clear in the years that followed, that dovetailed with issues experienced in the early days of Twitter when the platform was struggling to find a way to make sense of the rapidly expanding mass of unstructured data that the platform was producing (Bernard, 2019). They can also be used in ironic, self-referential ways that undercut an individual’s sentiment in a post (Bernard, 2019, p. 71). Hashtags are widely used on Twitter to define a shared context for an event (Ma et al., 2012) and can range from the spurious to the serious, from sporting events or celebrity gossip to wars and protest movements. The important thing to consider in this context for critical security studies and democracy is that it creates a site through which discourses, sometimes diametrically opposed, are deliberately connected. This has had numerous important political applications. This includes hashtag feminism (Clark, 2016), Muslim women connecting their observations about feminism through the use of hashtags (Goehring, 2019), discussions of racial inequality within black lives matter (Yang, 2016) and Canadian politics (Small, 2011). However, it has been argued that a range of research contexts have been slow to grasp the importance of the hashtag as a site of online politics (Clark, 2016; Small, 2011). Hashtags organise the discussion of specific events or topics, and mean that a tweet becomes part of a broader debate and can connect with a

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larger audience than simple a tweet itself to one’s followers (Small, 2011). Hashtags have been seen as a new kind of “public” whereby previous publics can be connected to new publics (Rambukkana, 2015) These can be “rough and emergent, flawed and messy” (Rambukkana, 2015) precisely because they connect a range of content—from the vast range of user-generated content to professional news sources. Specifically, they have been vital in the emergence of identity debates which have been dominated by particular hashtag campaigns—receiving much attention as “a signature of oppositional social and political movements—#Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo are just three of many examples” (Bernard, 2019, p. 70). This should not take away from the other varieties of use—including that hashtags’ “prominent role in contemporary marketing demonstrates its profit-oriented applications (is) not only central but also inherent” (Bernard, 2019, p. 70). Thus, hashtags can become part of vernacular language—such as #metoo becoming a self-explanatory rubric in that it instantly recalls and acts as shorthand for the broader struggle for gender issues and the fight against sexual harassment (Bernard, 2019). This can be read as a negative development when it comes to broader identity debates—collecting diverse experiences and opinions under a single hashtag “strengthen the very tendencies towards homogenization and levelling” (Bernard, 2019, p. 6). This leaves significant questions about the utility of such an information organising tool in the light of the fact that it is seen that the acknowledgement, and even more the valorisation, of heterogeneity are so important in such identity debates (Bernard, 2019, p. 6). Another critique of hashtags is that #hashtags can reproduce dominant power hierarchies, not only disrupt them (Arceneaux, 2018). This is especially the case with “western orientated hashtags” (Arceneaux, 2018, p. 48). In part a product of the digital divide, given the over-representation of people from the global north in the population of social media users (Ali, 2011; van Dijk, 1993; Cullen, 2001). Thus, from the perspective of security, they are a tool through which individual tweets can be connected to broader security debates as a means to both contribute to subvert and re-make debates online about specific security issues. It is interesting to consider that in the specifics of the example being discussed here of the emergence of a hashtag that seeks to diversify and possibly oppose a dominant hashtag—#JeSuisAhmed and #JeSuisCharlie, social media develops a second hashtag to attempt to undermine the homogenizing tendencies of the first hashtag. Importantly,

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this hashtag incorporates themes about the police, as Ahmed died in the line of duty as a police officer. This poses broader questions within this context as the police have become central in a range of identity-based concerns in recent years. The police and social media has received little attention, barring the police using social media as a platform for engagement (Crump, 2011; Wood, 2004), as well as officers documenting indiscretions on social media platforms (Goldsmith, 2015). However, the multiple accounts of using fatal force against people of colour by police has received far more attention both publically, and from scholars of social media (Carney, 2016; Mourão & Brown, 2022). These developments have driven calls to transform, defund and/or abolish police forces (Cobbina-Dungy & Jones-Brown, 2021). Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, the global protest brought into question policing and how it can address community concerns (Lum et al., 2021). Operationalising the defunding of the policy is in fact extremely complex, with there being no other agency suitable to respond to the vast majority of emergency requests, such as 911 calls in the USA (Lum et al., 2021). Debate has thus proceeded without adequate research about “either the scale or nature of issues that the police handle and the potential consequences of the proposed reform efforts” (Lum et al., 2021, p. 1). This occurs within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. While this recent development, which scholars have argued should be seen as a continuation of previous black liberation struggles (Francis & Wright-Rigueur, 2021; Lebron, 2017) was important in the context of examining social media as it has been argued that the BLM movement was “scaled up” by social media—facilitated building}connections, mobilising participants and tangible resources, coalition building and amplifying alternative narratives (Mundt et al., 2018). However, this was not a unidirectional process, as it was also deeply contested, subverted and not outright accepted as all discourses on social media are (Carney, 2016). While France presents specific questions as a context to examine police, security and identity, it shares some parallels. The famous 2005 riots, the largest disturbance at that time in peacetime Europe, were sparked by two youths dying while trying to escape from the police (Canet et al., 2015; Moran, 2011). France has been criticised for the role of the colonial process in producing French policy, and also the aggressive policing style when it comes to people of colour in France (Blanchard, 2020). Thus, French protests were “energised by the echo of black

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lives matter” (Carmellini, 2021, p. 1). Claims by French politicians, for example Christophe Castaner, that the two contexts were not comparable “France is not the United States” (Carmellini, 2021, p. 1). This comparison has long been seen as highly complex, with perhaps the most in-depth work comparing the American ghetto and the French Suburbs being cautious in comparing two advanced, yet quite different, forms of marginalisation (Wacquant, 2007). Indeed, with the most significant episode on unrest in French peacetime history, the riots of 2005 were triggered by police brutality (Schneider, 2008). Layered upon this within this specific example are the broader securitising narratives about French Muslims, of which Ahmed was one, and through the incorporation of a clearly Muslim name “Ahmed” in the hashtag is an integral component of the campaign. The securitisation of Islam in France, in particular the link in speech and rhetoric that connects Islam and political violence, is well covered in the literature (Cesari, 2005, 2009; Downing, 2019; Mavelli, 2013). The French state has specifically taken measures to regulate Islam because of concerns about identity and security (Samers, 2003). Here Muslims are situated and constructed as hostile to French society and “opting out” (Kepel, 2012; Samers, 2003). Their position is constantly undercut by elite public narratives that persistently frame French Muslims as “incomplete citizens” (Fredette, 2014). It is within this context that Ahmed and his death in service become important in debates about identity and security on social media. An aspect of this emerges when social media users use the hashtag #JeSuisAhmed (217,265 tweets were collected under the hashtag #JeSuisAhmed and analysed using machine learning) to ask questions about the oppositional narratives created in the context where Charlie Hebdo and free speech are on one side of the debate, and Muslims and terrorism are on the other. Here, a Muslim Twitter user offers the statement in French “Charlie Hebdo does caricatures about Muslims and the guy who tried to defend them was one”. Thus, this directly intervenes in debates about Muslim identity vis-à-vis free speech and attempts to demonstrate that not all Muslims agree with killing cartoonists. This goes further in intervening in current debates about the position of Muslims in France and their relationship to French values and refutes narratives that they are “opting out” of French life (Kepel, 2012; Samers, 2003).

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Other tweets go further, with a French puppet artist, Jeff Panacloc, tweeting a piece of user-generated content, a “meme”. This meme is a graphic which situates the names of the two police officers next to the cartoonists that died. Here the cartoonists are labelled as “dying for freedom” and the police, Ahmed and Frank, as “dying for France” with the logo of the French National Police. This graphic is tweeted with no comments, but the hashtags #JeSuisCharlie, #JeSuisAhmed and #JeSuisFrank. This demonstrates that in this case hashtags are used to connect comments about identity and security to a number of simultaneous debates on social media. You can thus connect debates about free speech to also commemorating the death of a Muslim police officer in the service of France. This is important because this security situation gives a rare look into the workings of, and identity of, the French security establishment. Scholars have argued that more Muslims work for the French security forces than fight for terrorist organisations (Roy, 2015). However, as France does not collect statistics on the subject, being illegal under French constitutional law, this is extremely difficult to ascertain and is rarely visible in the public discourse despite a long history of Muslim fighting for France dating from the French empire (Downing, 2019). Thus, the unfortunate death in service of Ahmed offers an insight into this process that not only are not all Muslims in France in agreement with the Charlie Hebdo killings, but that they also take a very active role in protecting France and its values of free speech. Other social media users are more overt with this message, with “#JeSuisCharlie but also #JeSuisAhmed, two #French dead for the #Nation, its diversity and the #Liberty #CharlieHebdo”. This tweet goes further in making a comment on identity within a security context by specifically naming a taboo in France in the diversity of society. Much has been written on the diversity and heterogeneity of the French national project both internally (Weber, 1976) and vis-à-vis Muslim minorities from North and West Africa (Downing, 2019; Hargreaves, 2007). Here these debates which are often ignored at the national level, or performed in ways which are directly opposed to Muslims being part of the French national project (Croucher, 2008), social media offers a space for these discussions to be had in the open and for individuals to express narratives about identity, belonging and security which are not part of the mainstream discourse.

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7.3.2

Social Media, Security and Internationalising Muslim Identity on Twitter

The second example discussed here offers both insights into a different national context—the UK, and also a different mechanism through which identity and security intertwine on social media. While there is a difference to the UK context, there are some similarities. Post-9/11 the category “British Muslim” emerged through successive political and social discourses indivisibly linked to security (Moore, 2008). 9/11 also rapidly increased coverage of British Muslims in the UK press (Moore, 2008; Poole, 2002; Saeed, 2007; Sian et al., 2012). This coverage has been dominated by recurring concerns of terror, religious and cultural difference and extremism (Moore et al., 2008). Two-thirds of coverage during this period situated Muslims as a threat and/or problem (Abbas, 2004; Moore et al., 2008). This has stripped British Muslims of agency; they are reported, written about and yet rarely given voice (Ahmed, 2009). Yet, British Muslims have conversely exerted agency in social and political representation (F. Adamson, 2011; Kahani-Hopkins & Hopkins, 2010). Thus, the securitisation of British Muslims has been a significant feature of contemporary British politics, even though the UK does not have the same secular state system as France. The two case studies used in this chapter are important era defining events in British politics and security. The first is the Grenfell tower fire where British Muslims became important within narratives about the fire circumstantially as residents of both the building itself, and the local, multicultural area of London in which the tower sits which contains the UK’s largest Moroccan diaspora (Haas et al., 2011). However, constructions of Grenfell’s relationship to Muslims did not simply emerge from this circumstantial proximity to a national disaster, social media quickly connected the fire to well-worn and problematic tropes about Islam and Muslim. Grenfell was quickly discussed within “fake news” media using content purposefully fabricated and/or manipulated (Edson et al., 2018). The conspiracy theory website “Infowars” used Grenfell to diffuse narratives about Muslims celebrating the fire and restating the trope of Islam being both “obsessed with death…fundamentally barbaric” (Joseph Watson, 2017). The Manchester bombing (appendix 2) was quite different in that it did not just connect British Muslims to security circumstantially, but more directly with the British-Libyan bomber Abedi’s life history as a “homegrown” jihadist re-ignited debates about

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counter terrorism and “Muslim” radicalisation in the UK and beyond (Rohde, 2017; Hastings, 2017). Investigating the role of new media in internationalising these British security debates required employing robust data collection and analysis techniques in the face of a range of access difficulties faced by scholars of new media. These examples demonstrate that security and identity become intertwined, and importantly, internationalised on social media. This demonstrates the disruptive potential of new media platforms for questions of identity and security. The rise to influence of two international Muslim voices in British security debates demonstrates how users can contribute to, and become important, in identity and security debates in contexts far from their own. Here, the influence comes from Muslim voices from the USA and the UAE (appendix 1 and 2) and social media enables them to direct influence at events in the UK from geographical contexts far removed from the UK. An important aspect of this is that they intervene in a context where traditional media is considered to hamper Muslim agency in shaping debates on their relationship to security, integration and their position in non-Muslim majority societies (Moore et al., 2008; Sian et al., 2012). These examples demonstrate that when considering identity and security on social media, we are required to consider the ways in which users can directly intervene in these debates and thus assert their agency in unexpected ways away from their immediate contexts. Thus, the use of new media does not just enable Muslims an expression of discursive agency that echoes in cyberspace, such as those discussed around Muslim women discussing the hijab (Kavakci & Kraeplin, 2017), feminism (Goehring, 2019), ex-Muslims contesting Islam (Larsson, 2016) or bloggers discussing their integration (Miladi, 2016), but rather that they can go further, and in real-time construct Muslims’ relationships to unfolding security situations where their positions in societies are being questioned. Thus, this goes much further than existing conceptions of Muslims in security contexts using social media to wage the “electronic jihad” (Laytouss, 2021), but rather that they also use social media to contest a range of security narratives. Empirically, this was also done using two different kinds of messages shaped by the specifics of both the “physical” offline context of the security situation, but also the “virtual” context of the online debate taking place. Fake news and disinformation has received significant attention from social media scholars (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017) but not the ways in which it can be contested and refuted in security debates

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online. There is a conventional wisdom that social media users see fake news and believe it (Silverman & Singer-Vine, 2016). However, the reality is far more nuanced, and the example here demonstrates how fake news spread in a security situation is only part of a far larger set of discourses. For example, the Infowars article about Muslims celebrating Grenfell (Joseph Watson, 2017) was present within the online discussion, a far more influential narrative emerged in the interaction between a Muslim social media user. This occurs in the context of self-identified Muslim Twitter user @MuslimIQ becoming influential in debates about the place of Muslims within the context of Grenfell tower by reposting and captioning an article from the British Newspaper “The Independent” (Griffin & Osborne, 2017) while located in the USA. This is important to consider as Grenfell occurred in a context of media confusion and the emergence of many factorially inaccurate and contested narratives about the fire. For example, it was reported, and retracted, that a baby had been thrown from Grenfell tower and caught by people on the ground (BBC News, 2017), whilst both labour MP David Lammy (Oppenheim, 2017) and British pop singer Lilly Allen (Gentleman, 2017) contributed to diffusion of negative “fake news” by declaring official causality figures underestimated. The example presented is that of an American-Muslim new media user contested these messages and contributed to the broader online debate by tweeting an article from the British newspaper “The Independent ‘London fire: Muslims up early for Ramadan may have saved Grenfell Tower residents’ lives ’”. This shows the synergy between social media and “traditional” news media despite the two often considered to be separate, discrete and competing. Here, even if mainstream British media has been found to be dominated by negative and securitising narratives towards British Muslims (Moore, 2008; Poole, 2002), this Muslim influencer uses a British media source to contribute to the debate about British Muslims in a positive sense. He also does not just share this media as a link, but uses it to buttress his own take on the event that he captions with “Rising for prayer to escape the personal hellfire & meanwhile helped neighbors escape a literal fire. #GrenfellFire”. This does not shy away from incorporating religious themes, and seeks to attach the message to the broader debate about Grenfell using the hashtag #Grenfell. Thus from a critical security perspective it demonstrates how the notion of security elites becomes complicated within discussions of security on social media. @MuslimIQ was not an established security elite, journalist nor political

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commentator at the time but happened to share a comment that became a key node of interaction within the debate. Since Grenfell, the account has also been mothballed, with the author moving to a new account. As such, the ephemeral nature of being part of security elite speech is an important part of social media from a critical security perspective. Individuals rise to prominence, influence a particular security debate at a particular time, but it is (i) difficult to predict who will do this from their previous activities, and (ii) there is no guarantee that this influence will last beyond one specific security situation. This ephemeral and unpredictable landscape makes it difficult to make sweeping generalisations about social media, and also to connect it to the broader emancipatory agenda that critical security studies holds as central to its very mission. If we can talk about social media offering a “thin” form of discursive emancipation, where individuals can take part in security debates and construct them in ways that they want, even this has to be tempered by the ephemeral nature of the social media landscape. The second example of the internationalisation of British security debates comes in the context of the Manchester bombing. This far more directly pulls Muslims into the dominant narratives regarding security and terrorism (Moore, 2008; Poole, 2002; Saeed, 2007; Sian et al., 2012) because of its nature as an attack by a British jihadist on a civilian target. Thus, in this case, there was no need for a fake news story within the context that would draw Muslims in as security threats. However, the response of the Twitter user based in the Emirates is interesting because in a similar way he seeks to use social media to intervene in security debates about events far away and thus gets drawn into the broader constructions about the Manchester bombing. In the light of the bombing of the Manchester Arena by a British Muslim of Libyan origin, @SpookyAly tweets “The extremists have nothing to do with Islam and Muslims. Terrorism has no religion, pass it on” alongside an image displaying text “it was a monster not a Muslim”. This engages with well-established tropes in the British media of Muslims as terrorists and Islam as violent (Poole, 2002; Moore et al., 2008). A different dimension to this example is the contestation of the message by the broader Twitter audience. As such, becoming an ephemeral security elite in this sense does not mean that the audience is convinced, nor that you are elevated above receiving problematic responses. Much of the contestation comes from users attempting to refute his message and tie Islam and Muslims directly back as vectors of terrorism

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and insecurity, much in line with dominant discourse in the British media (Moore et al., 2008; Poole, 2002). However, it is important to note that while the British media frames Islam and Muslims as security concerns, and does not do so with the same problematic essentialist rationales as social media users do. For example, a Twitter user located in the USA responds to the original tweet with “If the Quran is against violence why are there so many Muslim terror attacks? Don’t see any Buddhists starting shit”. This demonstrates the further internationalisation of British security debates—i.e. users as far apart as the United Arab Emirates and the USA contesting debates about British security. It also demonstrates that debates become quickly “flattened” and decontextualised. Here, not only are the specifics of the British context, and indeed the context of the specific terror attack, lost quickly but the debate also goes back to the broader general discussions about Islam and terror that have been repeated since the 9/11 terror attacks.

7.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age This chapter has sought to open up debates about identity and security on social media. The discursive turn in critical security studies opened up the discipline in the post-Cold War era to consider a range of “new” security concerns—one of which was “identity”. However, this question of “identity” was much tied up in the context of the time—especially in the simmering ethnic and religious tensions that erupted in the 1990s. However, identity and security have a range of ever more complex and at times unexpected intersections in the contemporary era. In fact, as a commentary on the at times arbitrary divisions required to structure a book like this one, identity and security could have taken in and dialogued with many of the examples presented in this book that examine other aspects of the critical security studies—social media landscape. Indeed, identity appears in a range of human interactions, and as security becomes ever more embedded in everyday life, and we as humans become ever more embedded in security practices and discussion in both real life and a range of popular culture forms, a range of identity features will inevitably bleed between these multipolar aspects of life. This chapter has attempted to use two examples to open up identity and security questions on social

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media in more specific ways. Here it has taken user-generated content and attempted to demonstrate some important emerging trends in the context of social media and security on social media. This has attempted to make some suggestions for the multitude of ways that the critical security studies literature can take into account questions of identity in the context of security. In the first example from the French context, it demonstrates how social media in the context of security can offer a space where a range of identity-based discussions can take place around hashtags. This demonstrated the way that a situation of (in) security can offer a space where questions of Islam, free speech and national identity can take place. This refutes dominant narratives that Muslims are hostile to, and separate from, the French republic (Fredette, 2014). In a context where statistics about the numbers of Muslims, let alone the number that serve in the police or armed forces, are illegal in France (Downing, 2019), it demonstrates that they are indeed in the service of the republic, defending law and order and free speech. The examples here from the UK demonstrates that way that not only do security debates become internationalised on social media, but they do so within a context of the contested nature of Muslim identity and its broader place in the global context. The two examples also demonstrate something that critical security studies needs to consider when approaching questions of social media in what a notion of security elite means in the social media context. Both users presented here become important in the debates and in a sense could be considered “elites”, but this is not only unpredictable, but also extremely fleeting and ephemeral. As such, it is difficult to reproduce the notion of elites when it comes to security speech on social media. Additionally, while both discussing British security situations, and the role of Muslims within them, the debate can become highly decontextualised and become about the more general questions of Islam and terrorism and thus identity and security debates on social media do not always result in nuanced and structured discussions. Thus, while it can be argued that social media makes security debates more diffuse, and can offer users an albeit “thin” kind of discursive emancipation, as they can contribute, and even become elite in debates about security and identity, this processes is complex and multifaceted.

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Appendices Appendix 1 Total of 44,007 tweets collected with keywords of “Muslim” and “Grenfel” over a 96-hour period. The top 5% by influence score derived from Gephi betweenness centrality analysed in depth: Coding Category

% of sample

Positive coverage of saving lives during fire Condemning far-right protest outside mosque Parodying conspiracy theories about the fire Tweets negative about Muslims i.e. using fire to convert Christians Unencodable (non-Latin characters/foreign languages)

74 15 3 1 7

Appendix 2 Code book for the user from the UAE who commented on the Manchester bombing Explanation: Total Sample: Sentiment Agree: Islam/Muslim non-violent

Nuancing terror and identity Simple Agreement Sentiment Disagree: Muslims are terrorists

Islamic religion inherently violent Simple disagreement

Use of Islamic doctrine or examples to show Islam/Muslims not violent Examples of white/Christian or other religion terrorism “I agree” In part of full Muslims are terrorist even if an extreme element Reference to specific scripture or general sentiment “I disagree”

Tweet Tally:

%

267 62 38

100 23% of total 61

15

24

9 163 83

15 61% of total 51

50

31

28

16% (continued)

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(continued)

Anti-immigration

Explanation:

Tweet Tally:

%

Stopping immigration would solve problem of terrorism

3

2

42

16% of total

Sentiment Neutral:

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CHAPTER 8

Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Studies in a Digital Age

8.1 Introducing Conclusions on Social Media and Security in the Digital Age This book has demonstrated that social media presents some crucial opportunities for critical security scholars. This is both to broaden conceptions of “what counts” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) as international relations research because of the insights that social media can give to a range of security and politics questions. Related to this, social media data and its exploitation can offer important empirical and theoretical insights into a range of security and international relations concerns. In fact, this book has barely scratched the surface of this potential, with its modest interventions into examining terrorism, vernacular security, democracy and identity. These could easily have been further multiplied to examine a far larger range of questions, such as gender and the environment. Indeed, some of the specific empirical examples give tantalising insights into the potential of social media data to offer insights into a range of subjects. The example of Snapchat use to foster insecurity highlights how the attention that the critical turn argued should be lavished on trans-national organised crime networks can make use of social media networks to get at some of these questions. Indeed, coming too late to be analysed and examined for this book, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the emergence of the “open source” intelligence community and the exploitation of the Armed Forces

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of Ukraine, in tandem with NATO, of a range of technologies previously untested on the battlefield is fascinating.

8.2 Macro Reflections on Social Media and Critical Security in a Digital Age Moving back to the key observation of this book, it is worth revisiting the key findings of this book in the light of the work done in the empirical chapters of this book. A difficult premise for all researchers is to “zoom out” from the fascinating empirics and intricacies of their particular niche or empirical examples. However, zooming out demonstrates that there are some macro level observations that this book makes about social media, critical security studies and how they intersect in the digital age. 8.2.1

The Centrality of Interdisciplinary Approaches

The first of these is the assertion that shattering disciplinary boundaries is a key imperative of not only critical security studies more broadly, but has to be brought to the fore if it is going to keep pace with technological, social and economic developments. Critical security studies is in fact well placed to do this given its pedigree in widening both the concerns of security studies, and also the disciplinary approaches brought to bear on questions of security. Indeed, the Paris school (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) makes some quite firm commitments to combat disciplinary hierarchies in security studies and argues strongly for bringing the tools of sociology and criminology into security studies. This has proven to be a key aspect of this book and the limited application of this notion in this book demonstrates two key outcomes. Firstly, it is that indeed these tools can open up a new world of opportunities for understanding how security evolves, is subverted, twisted and contested in the digital age. Secondly, the extremely limited scope that a single volume can afford to this highlights that further research is required. 8.2.2

Expecting the Unexpected and Broadening the Empirical Insights into Security

Related to this it is worth foregrounding the importance of “expecting the unexpected” when looking at security out in “the wild” of social media. This relates strongly to the important of smashing disciplinary

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hierarchies. However, getting “interdisciplinary” with security only works if we are willing to give time and effort to examining unexpected empirics in the themes that become important in constructions of security. Indeed, on a personal note, when I started social media research I was shocked at the themes that emerged. With several studies for this book, such as the Twitter response to the ISIS threat to Marseille, or the Twitter constructions of Muslims in the wake of the Manchester bombing, I was puzzled by the magnitude of the satirical content about Marseille and the prominence of a football fan account in the covering of Manchester. Indeed, football makes frequent appearances here as a symbolic register for the construction of security, across different national contexts and is thus likely to offer more insights in other contexts. This book, however, falls down here on this note of national contexts and this ability to contribute to how to expect the unexpected is limited by the limited scope of this book, with mostly Western case studies. There exists a range of national, linguistic, regional and sub-cultural contexts that undoubtedly would offer significant insights for critical security scholars to follow up on and produce important scholarship in the future. 8.2.3

New Platforms, New Insights

Both of these observations are further complicated, but also given even more opportunities for contributions, by the constantly oscillating, undulating and transforming context of the social media landscape. The magnitude and diversity of platforms is mindboggling and constantly evolving. Thus, some of the newer platforms are conspicuous by their absence from the studies in this book—such as TikTok. This highlights a further limit of this book, but also an opportunity to further re-think and apply the concepts and tools of critical security studies to new contexts in further research. 8.2.4

Discursive Emancipation and Social Media

A further question that remains unsettled by this book can be found in the ambiguities of the emancipatory promises of critical theory as it applies to social media. It is important to highlight, however, that this is not the first, nor the only, context where critical theory’s unrealised emancipatory promises have been highlighted, as this is a much bigger problem with critical, and indeed many other, kinds of theory in having limited or even

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negative impacts in the real world. This is mirrored in the emancipatory paradoxes of social media technologies more broadly that offer opportunities for emancipation, but also control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015) and commodification (Allmer, 2015). This is further complicated by the digital divide that excludes many of the globally disadvantaged from even viewing or taking into account social media debates (Ali, 2011; Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006). However, what this book has aimed to cautiously demonstrate is that social media, from a critical security perspective, offers possibilities of “discursive emancipation”. This is because at some of those previously excluded from security debates can and do take the opportunities social media offers to have a voice and to articulate a range of security narratives. A football YouTuber, for example, would not have been able to articulate security narratives that would have made global headlines without social media. Now, this may be a “thin” notion of emancipation, but it is important. Indeed, the emancipatory commitment of much of critical theory is in itself quite problematic, taking square aim at dismantling global capitalism which may, or indeed may not, be a popular nor viable premise.

8.3 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security Concepts This book highlighted the evolution of security studies from its postworld war evolution of realism and liberalism to the beginnings of the critical turn in the latter part of the twentieth century. From the perspective of attempting to understand security in the digital age, the discursive turn and its dramatic expansion of security studies is an important starting point for considering social media. Indeed, the discursive turn gave a lot to international relations more broadly, advocating the study of images and non-traditional forms of data in the study of the international system (Hansen, 2018) as well as considering the way that security is penetrating ever more aspects of daily life (Huysmans, 2011). While both of these are relevant to social media study, owing to its multimodal output and increased penetration into daily life, the discursive turn offers a far broader observation about security that has effectively formed the basis of much of this books, and indeed the broader critical theory, approaches, to security as well as having “established itself-for European scholars at least-as the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security” (McSweeney, 1996). That is the key understanding that security is

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not only objective, but also subjective and enmeshed in broader processes of social construction (Buzan et al., 1997). Here, the idea that security is constructed through speech acts is fundamentally important for considering the social media landscape that is replete with discourse and “speaking” of a vast range of political and social issues. Some of the specifics of the discursive turn as articulated by the Copenhagen school do present some issues with its application to studying security and social media. The problem begins with the most important issue with their theoretical approach being their elite focused orientation, where issues only become security concerns when constructed as “existential threats to a referent object by a securitizing actor” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 5). This methodological elitism (Stanley & Jackson, 2016) offered too narrow a focus on the speech of dominant actors (McDonald, 2008) of politicians, government agencies and bureaucracies (St˛epka, 2022). While many of these actors have access to social media, the social media landscape clearly massively diversifies the number and range of actors with the ability to speak security and the elite-centric orientation of the Copenhagen school clear reduces its ability to take into account the developments on social media. However, this is not as simple as it seems on the surface because neither does social media (i) completely remove the role of elites (ii) bring every actor onto social media due to the digital divide within and between societies nor (iii) provide a totally flat discursive landscape. As the examples of this book have demonstrated, social media is shaped by a range of “influence” metrics that make some users “more equal” than others because while anyone can contribute to a debate, to become “more equal” and more influential in a debate is far from a given. Thus elite speak is important, but social media means that who, how and when someone becomes a security elite becomes unpredictable, ephemeral and highly dynamic. Moving onto considering what the Welsh school of security studies could offer an examination of social media opens up an interesting synthesis between critical theories emancipatory claims and the discussions about the emancipatory potential of social media. Indeed, some scholars have argued that this emancipatory thread must run through all scholarship for it to be considered critical (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). Dovetailed with the initially optimistic assessment that web technologies, and then social media, would enable greater global emancipation and this emancipatory commitment of critical theory seem tantalisingly compatible. However, squaring this circle is far more complex and

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pessimistically problematic. Social media technologies catch users in a web of commodification and control as well as providing some limited potential for emancipation (Allmer, 2015; Dencik & Leistert, 2015). What is cautiously advanced from the examples in this book is an, albeit thin, notion of discursive emancipation where from a critical security studies perspective we can see new voices emerging that are important for critical security studies. However, these new voices don’t follow the rigid rules of established security actors. Rather, to understand the idioms, symbols and metaphors they use to articulate their experiences of security the tools of international relations are found lacking. This is where the Paris school of security studies offers some important insights in their important work in expanding the field and fighting the fight for the smashing of disciplinary hierarchies in understanding security and considering how sociology and criminology could offer important insights into security concerns (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). If we are to understand how criminals’ brand themselves on Snapchat or how a YouTuber uses swear words in the re-construction of a threat from the Islamic state to his home town, the stuffy approaches of international relations need some help. This highlights another important point in that the way that security is constructed on social media is often in highly localised idioms that draw heavily on a range of non-security related themes in the everyday. This is where vernacular security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Croft & VaughanWilliams, 2017; Jarvis & Lister, 2012; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016) provides some important, and I would say possibly the most significant, ability to engage with the opportunities posed by social media. Its overt theoretical emptiness (Jarvis & Lister, 2012) is a veritable container for the range of tools that can be taken from other social science disciplines to make sense of security in a range of local contexts. Two key issues emerge here, however. Firstly, social media is not completely flat, as previously mentioned it does have its own hierarchies and those voices from below are not embedded in a “flat” landscape but rather a landscape with its own contours. Secondly, vernacular security studies has thus far been concerned with how those below have security pushed onto them from above, with an underdeveloped account of how those below create insecurity themselves with vernacular themes. Critical terrorism studies, by applying a constructivist orientation to questions of terrorism post-9/11, offer significant potential for synergies with social media output. Interesting social media has received a

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lot of attention as a place for violent extremist “terrorist” groups of a range of varieties to organise and promote their activities (Davey & Weinberg, 2021; Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019). The insights provided by critical terrorism studies into questions of how terrorism has become integrated into popular culture (Holland, 2011; Veloso & Bateman, 2013). However, the inclusion of social media requires critical terrorism studies to also consider the reverse, in how themes from popular culture become important in the construction of terrorism on social media, in particular in the examples presented here where unexpected and paradoxical themes such as local football teams become important in constructing terrorism. Thus critical terrorism studies needs to consider the far wider questions of the unexpected ways that terrorism is constructed on social media if it is to get to grips with the importance in new media technologies as a place for narratives about terrorism to form, be contested and unsettled. There are many lessons that the literature on technology and security can teach us and inform the insights from critical security studies when examining social media. An important observation here is about the historical context of technology and security where the intersection of technology politics and security has a history of humanity itself (Reuter et al., 2019). Building on this observation and considering that social media is one in a universe of cases of technology, security and politics, there is a universe of critical theories of technology that exist in a range of domains (Leckie & Buschman, 2008) with interest in information technologies having boomed in recent years. This has included a rich literature on security including cybercrime (Alexandrou, 2021), cybersecurity (Foltz & Simpson, 2020) and the ways in which information technologies can be applied to the battlefield (Reuter, 2019). Perhaps most important to this book are the writings which deal with the questions of social media and politics. In particular, the “tiresome binary debate between cyberoptimists and cyber-skeptics” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 2) has been key in examining the possible disruptive and emancipatory potential of social media, something so key to the normative underpinnings of critical security studies. The “cyber-optimists” early on heralded the social media age as one that would bring about the end of authoritarianism due to the ability of social media to challenge their monopolies on expression and freedom of the press. The “cyber-pessimists” acknowledge the limits of social media, and indeed its ability to spread xenophobic narratives and pre-oppression voices. However, the reality, as ever, is complicated and both of these impulses exist on social media and our job as critical

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security scholars has to be to assess their dynamics in any given context. What can be bought home from these debates is the paradoxical relationship social media has with emancipation. Social media companies are “commercial entities, first and foremost” (Dencik & Leistert, 2015, p. 4) and thus they enmesh users in a complex and tense relationship between “emancipation and commodification” (Allmer, 2015). Another vein of the literature that has underpinned the discussions here is also the tension between emancipation and control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015; Leistert, 2015). Important here is the way that governments mine social media data as very easy ways to understand and undermine protests (Leistert, 2015, p. 36). Thus the relationship between emancipation and commodification and control is complex and thus we are put in a position where this requires the tempering of critical security studies perspectives that call for radical emancipation as, in short, social media cannot deliver this.

8.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security Studies The methods chapter has demonstrated that methods and methodology form a key area of questions when considering how social media intersects with critical security perspectives. In part, this is required because there is still significant debate about what “counts” as international relations methods and practice, with “Both method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59). This remains very much an unsettled and evolving question, and critical security studies, as does international relations more generally, needs to take more seriously the potential that social media has in providing a rich source of data. This discussion was also necessitated by the diversity and magnitude of data sources that social media offers. Within this, there is really no one “social media” that offers concrete conclusions on critical security questions. Rather, there are a range of “social medias” that require very different approaches, which again require further refining and consideration depending on the particular security question that a scholar at any given time is interested in exploring. In short, rather than providing concrete “off the shelf” solutions, this discussion of methods has sought to demonstrate the importance of the scholars themselves engaging in creative methodology.

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Critical security studies is particularly strong here, because it has produced some exhaustive tomes to structure the field (inter alia: Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015; Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This demonstrates both that solid foundations have been laid in considering the vital question of exactly what critical in critical security studies actually means from a methods perspective (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). In particular, the experimental approach advocated by the critical security studies literature has been fundamental in structuring the methods used here and any scholar interested in social media research would do well to take it on board. Here, critical security sees methods as an experimental form of “bricolage” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015, p. 3) that require an “experimental move of to and fro” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015). In assessing access questions, this chapter also demonstrates that this “experimental move of to and fro” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) is not just constrained by the material and creative resources of the scholar in this context but rather by access to the data itself. This is a concern shared by much security studies enquiry because it is also difficult to gain access to many areas of security research, such as intelligence studies, counter terrorism or migration control enforcement. Twitter has done more than most to facilitate access with its free API, and now free academic API as a result is the most studied of the platforms. This does, however, skew the field as it means sampling a highly unrepresentative population (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019). Other platforms are harder to access—Facebook having tightened its API access rules in the light of the Cambridge analytica scandal, and apps like telegram and Snapchat specifically designed to not allow data access—the former to evade oppressive regimes, and the latter as a feature to allow more personal data to be shared. Another concern that constrains the experimental “to and fro” (Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015) of methodological approaches to social media are ethical concerns. Social media is an ethical mine field in terms of research as while scholars are dealing with human participants, their thoughts, feelings and opinions, they are doing so “at a distance” which has removed many of the usual academic checks on ethical research. For example, Twitter studies that analyse the output of 20,000 users is quite common, yet it is clearly impractical to seek informed consent for such as study from each participant that would be standard practice if we were conducting a study of even 200 participants through interviews. This is not to say that the two are completely the same, but rather to ask the difficult question of why the ethical considerations are

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so different. Clearly, this varies by platform, the subject of the research and indeed the methodology deployed in any given context and again requires significant reflections and engagement with ethics by any particular scholar in the context in which they hope to harness the power of social media to conduct critical security research. A good example of this has been applying the netnographic approach to questions of insecurity on Snapchat and how to handle conducting a passive in-depth study when security and access concerns mean you cannot ask for their informed consent. Finally, the chapter offered some reflections on specific methods that can give scholars some ideas about approaching social media, and which underpin much of the books empirics. This covers social network analysis, discursive approaches and questions around the operationalisation of netnography in the context of a social media app. While these seek to offer some practical insights, the aim is not to provide off the shelf recipes but to offer some insight into how they can be applied. Also, these open up a greater methodological discussion for future scholars about the dialogue between the social sciences and computer/data science. This is because social scientists don’t have the familiarity with complex computer science tools, as most computer/data scientists don’t have the in-depth training in social science approaches, theories, concepts and key problems. An example of how this has shaped the analysis in this book has been in the use of social network analysis to gain insights into the influence of social media and their centrality within conversations that provided a means to examine, and then conceptualise, the topography of social media and how this complicates understandings of the structures of security speak. This intersection of approaches offers some particularly exciting potential avenues for future critical security studies research as there exist significant, powerful tools that remain untapped from a security studies perspective. As machine learning and artificial intelligence become ever more prominent and available, this potential will only become further magnified.

8.5 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Terrorism Terrorism, and the “war on terror” became key features of the post9/11 security landscape. This has become re-invigorated in recent years with the rise of jihadists under the banner of the so-called Islamic

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State group (Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019) and right wing extremists (Davey & Weinberg, 2021) who both make significant use of technologies of communications as part of their activities. This chapter found significant promise in critical terrorism studies that seeks to conceptualise terrorism as a social construct (Gunning, 2007; Herring, 2008; Jackson et al., 2007) because it opened up a broader range of possibilities for terrorism to be constructed on social media. Indeed, critical terrorism has made some important inroads into this process, especially with considering the leaching of “terrorism” into many aspects of daily life (Breen Smyth et al., 2008). This chapter found particular utility from the constructivist perspective for social media are the observations that terrorism has become the subject of a range of popular culture products, including shows (Erickson, 2008; Holland, 2011) and comic books (Veloso & Bateman, 2013). This chapter pushed these ideas by demonstrating that resistance to terrorism discourses on social media incorporates, subverts and satirises terrorism in cross-pollination with cultural themes. Of particular, importance is the range of themes from the local context that emerge as important in social media discourses. This further claims that have been made in critical security studies about the importance of sociological knowledge and theories into questions of security (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This has been a significant threat throughout this book and this openness of critical security studies to incorporating such a wide range of disciplinary knowledge places it at the centre of being able to understand the range of ways that security, is, and will be complicated and subverted by communication technologies. There is significant potential for international relations, security studies and indeed critical terrorism studies to further take on board this key orientation in addressing how terrorism and indeed constructions of it will evolve in the short to medium term. This is of particular importance as scholars are going to continue to work on how terrorism takes place within and is mediated through, particular spatial, geographical and cultural contexts, more work is required to understand the range of processes that this takes. The empirics of this chapter seek to set out to do this by examining the themes which emerge in response to two examples—firstly of a Twitter response to a threat to attack Marseille, and in the wake of the Manchester bombings. Both of these are large, diverse, urban contexts with their own histories, identities and local symbols of reference. The literature on

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urban studies and urban identity has done a lot of work on conceptualising how and why these are important but more from a sociological perspective and international relations has tended to neglect local themes in preference for examining the greater powers in the global system. This chapter highlights how these local themes become central in constructions of terrorism on social media and play a role in constructions of terrorism, and indeed a role in resisting discourses of terrorism. In the case of Marseille, city landmarks, as well as the crime and violence within the city where themes used by social media users to resist the ISIS threat to the city. In Manchester, a different process occurred where social media users used the local context, its Muslim residents and their acts of kindness in the aftermath of the bombing to resist narratives around Muslims in the UK being synonymous with terrorism. Building on a key assumption of this book, that examining the potential that social media offers for advancing critical security studies requires “expect the unexpected”, football unexpectedly, and in different ways, becomes important in both contexts on social media. This is interesting as football has not received attention from this perspective with discussion on football and security centring on match security (Cleland & Cashmore, 2018) or hooligan firms (Garland & Treadwell, 2010). Football provides in both cases different kind of resources in resisting terrorism. In Marseille, as well as the themes of the local city landmarks and crime being subverted, so were the themes and discussions of the local football team. In Manchester, the teams’ symbols were not used per se, but a team fan account on Twitter was central in spreading narratives about Muslims being important in helping in the aftermath of the attack. Thus, while there is a literature on sport in politics and IR (Armstrong & Harris, 1991; Porro & Russo, 2000; Shobe, 2008), little literature exists on football and security. The literature that does highlights the problematic discourse some football fans have towards Islam and terrorism, for example the EDL and the Taliban in the UK (Garland & Treadwell, 2010) which does not leave room for football to resist such discourses. This is not to say that football and terrorism should become a new ‘subdiscipline’ within IR, but rather that when social media is concerned, more work is required to open the field and consider the far broader range of themes, discourses and symbols that are melded with, subvert and indeed go onto construct, understandings of security on social media. This will only become more diverse, and indeed important, as social media platforms themselves continue to mushroom in both type and popularity.

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8.6 Conclusions on Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age Building on the key conceptual and empirical discussions already undertaken within this book, it is important to turn to examine vernacular security studies. in my opinion, vernacular security studies is one of the most exciting recent developments in the field of critical security studies as it really de-centres security concerns away from international relation pre-occupation with the international system, states and state elites and makes a commitment to integrate the voices from below that indeed has a lot of say about security. The Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) broke open the CSS field in the 1990s with the revolutionary observation that security is not just material objective facts but is rooted in relational processes of construction and contestation by security elites. Vernacular security studies takes this even further (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012; Vaughan-Williams & Stevens, 2016). This pushes security scholars to engage with processes where “statist idea of security encountered local universes” (Bubandt, 2005, p. 276) and thus examine how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017). Thus, it does vital work in contesting state created and driven notions of threat and security policy (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019). This has employed approaches from a range of methods, including ethnographic (Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009) and qualitative focus group methodologies (Jarvis, 2019). While it is yet to engage with social media in meaningful ways, the theoretical ‘emptiness’ (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) of vernacular security studies that “allows for greater fidelity to the diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) situates it as possibly the most appropriate theoretical lens through which to examine the burgeoning online security sphere. This chapter also argued that vernacular security studies offers significant opportunities for cross-pollination with the Paris schools’ commitment to smashing disciplinary hierarchies (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This chapter has sought to re-enforce this point with the empirics it has chosen to investigate—a YouTube video from a football YouTuber and an in-depth study of (in)security on Snapchat. Both drug dealers on Snapchat and the YouTube influencer structure their constructions of security using the idioms, symbols and legends of the local urban setting of Marseille. This stitches the international and the local together

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in ways that must be understood through the existing rich literature on urban identity, space and place. Thus if we are to take seriously claims by vernacular security studies that it seeks to understand context specific understanding of idioms of uncertainty and fear about global, national and/or local security concerns (Bubandt, 2005) and how “citizens…construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires” (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017) we should look to the range of literature, whether anthropological, sociological and criminological that already do this in non-security contexts. However, this also comes with words of caution for the broader normative mission of several understandings of critical security studies. “Vernacular”, with its focus on non-elite voices “from below” could be mis-interpreted as a synonym for the “emancipation” called for by the Welsh school (Wyn Jones, 1999). This taps into the broader debate about social media as an emancipatory tool where initial hopes of optimism have had to give way to more modest, nuanced and complex acknowledgements that it is also used as a form of control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). Added to this are myriad of observations about the digital divide that should foster caution about our investigations about how social media works because many do not have access to the internet let alone social media, even in industrialised societies (Ali, 2011; Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006). However, somewhat paradoxical given its commitment to voices from below, vernacular security studies has also focused on how these voices interact with security facets pushed onto them from above. However, this chapter also seeks to contribute to the vernacular security literature in relation to social media by arguing that it is also can be applied to understanding how (in)security is shaped, formed and promoted by voices from below. As such, the “theoretically empty” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) orientation of vernacular security studies, combined with the interdisciplinarity of the Paris school (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) offer a means to understand how security from below is constructed. Empirically, this is applied to a newer development in the field, in terms of an app-based platform. App research is very much in its infancy (Aradau et al., 2019; Bayer et al., 2016) but requires greater attention as increasing numbers of appbased platforms emerge. Also, the app selected for study here, Snapchat demonstrates the issues researchers face because of the “self-destructing”

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(Bayer et al., 2016) nature of the data meaning it cannot be downloaded for later analysis. In applying, the netnographic (Alavi et al., 2010; Kozinets, 2002) method demonstrated its application within vernacular security studies and patches well into the extensive use of ethnographic approaches in vernacular security studies to date (Bubandt, 2005; Gillespie & O’Loughlin, 2009; Hultin, 2010). This uncovers more insights into the importance of local and regional themes in the construction of (in)security from below in the careful way that criminals using Snapchat brand themselves for their audiences. From this perspective, this opens up the question of how non-security concepts can and should be used to examine the commercialisation of security behaviour in capitalist societies as individuals don’t just create insecurity, but they go to significant lengths to brand it.

8.7 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital Age The sixth chapter of this book turned to the much vexed question of democracy and how democratic systems have been rocked by social media technology developments. The early “digital optimists” considered social media to be a panacea that would deliver humanity to a democratic utopia because social media would enable the flow of information to bypass authoritarian regimes. Clearly, the reality is far more complex, and the emergence of anti-democratic discourses and forces on social media brings security into the frame through the various security challenges that democracy faces. This chapter argues here that rather than just understanding the attacks on democracy online through purely technocratic means, scholars and policymakers should also go further and look at how security and democracy are constructed around these events and this also gives important insights into how they play out. In addition, these examples bring in an important part of the scholar media landscape that scholars would be wise to consider—the hashtag (#) that serves as an indexing and organising principle across a range of social media platforms that enables users to connect their posts to broader debates. These have become important in a range of security-based situations, such as #JeSuisCharlie in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France. Two hashtags from the 2017 French elections, one related

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to election meddling attempts #MacronLeaks and one related to abstention, #SansMoi7Mai demonstrate the myriad of ways that democracy and security intersect on social media. #MacronLeaks was a classic “hack and leak” operation, but one that failed to capture any compromising data for Macron. Demonstrating the importance of constructivist understandings of security, and also examining the constructions around hacking operations, because it was constructed as demonstrating a range of problematic political dimensions to a candidate. Examining the coverage on Twitter is dominated by anti-Macron sentiment that delves into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, connecting Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France and refuting Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the critical discursive turn in the security studies enables us to go further in examining how the social media environment can construct democracies, and indeed direct threats to them, in connection with other key themes in contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism. Voter abstention has long been seen as problematic for democracies, yet little attention has been paid to how this plays out online. #SansMoi7Mai showed that through social media scholars can begin to understand the ways that new forms of political distrust feed into ontologically insecure constructions of democracy and democratic systems. The social media discourses of abstention analysed here are centred on themes of political distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018). However, this becomes problematic by the contemporary trends in political distrust away from particular politicians to the entire system itself (Bertsou, 2019) is a dangerous development. Within the discussion of non-participation under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai distrust in the French media and in the broader political system as at the service of the oligarchy are important themes which emerge that demonstrate the way that discussions of political distrust on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theories that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014). Here, social media demonstrates some important and highly dynamic intersections with questions of security. Indeed, while liberal democracies have received some recent attention for their disparities between providing different levels of security to different ethnic groups in society, for example, with blacks being disproportionately affected by police

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violence (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020), or indeed how democratic politics can possibly de-securitise (Aradau, 2004). Democracy and social media has also received attention for the paradoxical relationship between emancipation, commodification and control (Allmer, 2015; Dencik & Leistert, 2015). The two examples here open up the possibilities for a wider reaching engagement between constructivist understandings of security and a range of aspects of democracy.

8.8 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age When critical scholars argued that the scope of security should be widened in the wake of the end of the Cold War to include identity concerns, in the context of the war in Yugoslavia, they could not pre-empt the rise of a range of identity concerns as fundamentally important to politics and security in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter found again that critical perspectives offer a range of important opportunities for conceptualising and examining identity on social media. The focus on security as a social construction (Buzan et al., 1997), the need to challenge disciplinary hierarchies and bring in sociological understandings into security analysis (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018) clearly have significant purchase here. However, it is important in any given context to be clear about the micro-dynamics and contestation of identity contractions on social media, because identities in the digital world are never constructed in simplistic terms and non-contested. The ability of users to express a wide range of identity preferences on social media opens up almost limitless possibilities for identity construction, and also to contest the sentiments expressed by other users. However, again scholars would do well to avoid simplistic and hyperbolic statements on online identity politics. The empirical examples used in this chapter demonstrate some of the key issues faced by attempting to examine the intersection of social media, identity and security on social media. The first example from the French context, it demonstrates how social media in the context of security can offer a space where a range of identity-based discussions can take place around hashtags. This demonstrated the way that a situation of (in)security can offer a space where questions of Islam, free speech and national identity can take place. This refutes dominant narratives that Muslims are hostile to, and separate from, the French republic (Fredette,

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2014). In a context, where statistics about the numbers of Muslims, let alone the number that serve in the police or armed forces, are illegal in France (Downing, 2019), it demonstrates that they are indeed in the service of the republic, defending law and order and free speech. Moving to the British context demonstrates something very different in that scholars do not only need to consider the terms upon which identity is constructed on social media, but also how social media opens the possibilities of the globalisation of identity debates as, while acknowledging the digital divide, social media opens up debates to global audiences. Indeed, the two users identified as influential in debates about Muslim identity in the UK do so from outside of the UK—one in the USA, and the second in the United Arab Emirates. They demonstrate that a notion of security elite means in the social media context. Both users presented here become important in the debates and in a sense could be considered elites’, but this is not only unpredictable, but also extremely fleeting and ephemeral. As such, it is difficult to reproduce the notion of elites when it comes to security speech on social media. Additionally, while both discussing British security situations, and the role of Muslims within them, the debate can become highly decontextualised. Here, as with much online security discussions, the specifics are lost on the more general questions of Islam and terrorism and thus identity and security debates on social media do not always result in nuanced and structured discussions. Thus while it can be argued that social media makes security debates more diffuse and can offer users an albeit ‘thin’ kind of discursive emancipation, as they can contribute, and even become elite in debates about security and identity, this processes is complex and multifaceted.

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Index

A Abstention, 16, 182, 191, 197, 201, 254 Active netnography, 89, 91 Algerian FLN, 2 Al-Muhajiroun, 150 Alt-right, 190, 192, 193, 195, 197 anti-Semitism, 43 Arab spring, 2, 57, 96 Artificial intelligence (AI), 79, 248 Audience, 10, 11, 27, 34, 35, 37, 38, 47, 51, 75, 88, 122, 151, 161, 187, 188, 190, 220, 227, 253, 256 B Bataclan theatre, 195 Black Lives Matter (#BlackLivesMatter), 38, 209, 219–221 Blue tick, 83, 84 Branding, 15, 93, 94, 151, 159, 162–164, 166, 244, 253 Breaking Bad, 163 Breivik, Anders, 150

Bricolage, 77, 83, 88, 101, 247 British Muslims, 121, 128, 224, 226 Buffett, Warren, 83, 85 C Cambridge Analytica scandal, 73, 247 Capitalism, 8, 30, 43, 44, 163, 185, 216, 242 Censorship, 8, 58, 59, 85, 87 CGI, 153 Charlie Hebdo, 13, 17, 109, 110, 115, 121, 156, 157, 195, 210, 218, 222, 223, 253 Chemtrails, 166 Civil society, 187, 189 Coding, 77, 80, 81, 98, 99, 130, 170 Cold War, 10, 16, 25, 31, 33, 34, 48, 180, 200, 209, 255 Commodification, 8, 58, 201, 242, 244, 246, 255 Competitive authoritarianism, 186 Conspiracy fantasies, 195 Conspiracy theories, 16, 166, 167, 182, 183, 189–192, 195, 198–201, 230, 254

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1

261

262

INDEX

Constructivism, 26, 30, 31, 54, 112, 114 Copenhagen School, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 14, 24–26, 28, 31–43, 50, 51, 62, 63, 74, 75, 88, 97, 110, 143, 147, 167, 209, 211, 214, 243, 251 COVID-19, 83, 162, 164–166, 170, 209 Crime, 14, 34, 41, 84, 96, 125–127, 129, 130, 153, 155–157, 160–164, 166, 170, 239, 250 Critical terrorism studies (CTS), 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 14, 23, 26, 27, 51–54, 63, 110, 112–117, 119, 121–124, 126, 128, 129, 157, 244, 245, 249 Cultural production, 44 Culture wars, 211, 216 Cybercrime, 56, 64 Cybersecurity, 56, 164, 165, 245

D DAESH , 130, 153–157 Data access, 6, 7, 72, 77, 87, 100, 247 Decolonial, 4, 216 Democracy, 15, 16, 30, 35, 39, 56, 148, 150, 179–191, 194, 196–198, 200–202, 219, 239, 253–255 Democratisation, 190 De-platforming, 1, 28, 58, 60, 77, 82 Digital divide, 8, 13, 84, 100, 169, 220, 242, 243, 256 Disciplinary nationalism, 47 Discourse analysis, 73, 95, 97, 98 DiscoverText, 80 Discursive methods, 13, 75, 76, 97, 98

Discursive turn, 5, 9, 16, 24, 75, 95, 96, 181, 182, 191, 200, 228, 242, 243, 254 Doomscrolling, 61 Drug dealers, 90, 93, 159, 162, 163, 168, 251 E Egyptian Muslim brotherhood, 2 Election blackout, 193, 197 Election meddling, 56, 182, 191, 197, 254 Electronic jihad, 55, 118, 225 Emancipation, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 25, 26, 32, 40, 42–44, 50, 57, 58, 63, 116, 117, 122, 142, 145, 146, 168, 184, 185, 188, 201, 210, 216, 227, 229, 242–244, 246, 255, 256 Emergency politics, 35 End of history, 180, 181 English Defence League, 112 Environmentalism, 4 Ethics, 13, 33, 45, 73, 87, 90, 92, 94, 165, 247, 248 Ethnography, 92–94, 145 Eurocentric, 29 European Union (EU), 181, 214, 218 Existential threats, 35, 180, 181, 191, 215 Extremism, 59, 150, 224 F Facebook, 6, 58–60, 63, 73, 82, 90, 158, 188, 247 Field notes, 93, 94 Fog of war, 61, 101 Followers, 77, 126, 220 Football, 6, 14, 15, 111, 127–130, 152–155, 194, 241, 242, 245, 250, 251

INDEX

France, 14–17, 111, 113, 120, 121, 154, 155, 157, 160, 162–164, 166, 182, 191–193, 195, 199, 200, 210, 218, 221–224, 229, 253, 254, 256 Fraud, 84, 162, 164, 165, 170 French Muslims, 17, 114, 152–154, 158, 210, 222 French suburbs, 121, 222 FRONTEX, 77

G Gender, 3, 4, 184, 217, 220, 239 Generation Z, 84 Geolocation, 82, 101, 158 Gephi, 89, 230 Globalisation, 256 Gmail, 193 Great replacement theory, 195 Grenfell tower, 17, 218, 224, 226

H Hack and leak, 16, 182, 191, 194, 197, 200, 254 Hashtags, 16, 17, 97, 115, 182, 190–194, 196–198, 201, 202, 209, 210, 218–223, 226, 229, 253–255 Heisenberg, 163 Human rights, 30

I Identity, 14, 16–18, 34, 43, 94, 111, 121, 127, 131, 132, 143, 164, 209–225, 228–230, 239, 255, 256 Indonesia, 147, 148, 152 Influencers, 78, 168, 226, 251 Infowars, 224, 226

263

Interdisciplinary, 12, 78, 144, 211, 241 Intersubjective, 35, 37, 46, 148 Iranian revolution, 2 Islamic State group in Syria (ISIS), 1, 13–15, 17, 41, 55, 59, 60, 63, 64, 77, 80, 82, 111, 118–120, 124, 125, 127, 129, 144, 152–157, 170, 241, 250

J Jihadists, 41, 110, 117, 120, 121, 124, 128, 150–154, 160, 210, 224, 227, 248

K Kalashnikov, 125, 126, 155, 164

L Le Pen, Marine, 193, 197, 202 LGBT, 149 Liberalism, 24, 29, 30, 180, 242

M Machine learning, 79–81, 222, 248 Macron, Emmanuel, 16, 191–200, 202, 254 #MacronLeaks, 16, 56, 182, 191–194, 196, 197, 201, 254 Manchester bombing, 14, 111, 120, 126, 129, 218, 224, 227, 230, 241, 249 Marseille, 60, 80, 111, 120, 124–127, 129, 130, 152, 153, 155–157, 163, 165, 168, 241, 249–251 Marxism, 31, 42, 43, 55, 58, 186, 187 Meme, 6, 15, 34, 48, 57, 60, 64, 80, 81, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101,

264

INDEX

123–125, 149, 183, 193, 195, 223 Method, 6, 7, 12, 13, 28, 50, 52, 59, 71–74, 76–79, 81–83, 87, 90–92, 94, 95, 97–100, 144, 145, 148, 158, 165, 169, 246–248, 251, 253 Methodological, 7, 12, 13, 15, 52, 53, 71, 72, 74–76, 81, 87, 88, 91, 97, 98, 100, 101, 115, 149, 159, 162, 169, 243, 247, 248 Methodological elitism, 5, 34 Methodology, 6, 12, 13, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83, 87, 88, 91, 92, 94, 98, 101, 150, 246, 248 #MeToo, 220 Misinformation, 189 Mobius strip, 46 Musk, Elon, 82, 101 N Narcos TV show, 163 NATO, 240 Neo-Nazi, 77 Netflix, 163 Netnography, 13, 15, 73, 82, 90–94, 163, 169, 248 9/11, 109, 110, 113, 121, 224, 228 NodeXL, 89 Nordic model, 162 Norms, 30, 99, 148, 185 O Oligarchy, 16, 182, 192, 199, 201, 202, 254 Olympique de Marseille, 127, 130, 152 OneDrive, 193 Ontological security, 214 Open-source intelligence, 4 Orientalism, 212

P Paris school, 7, 9, 11, 23, 26, 28, 43, 45–50, 63, 75, 111, 125, 145, 168, 240, 244, 252 Passive netnography, 92 Pass sanitaire, 166 Phishing, 193 Polarisation, 15 Police brutality, 222 Political distrust, 16, 182, 191, 192, 198, 199, 201, 254 Post-truth, 85 Propaganda, 55, 59, 64, 118, 119, 150, 152, 153, 189 Protest, 36, 56–58, 209, 217–219, 221, 230, 246 Python, 77, 80 R Race, 3, 85, 184, 194, 215 Racism, 41 R (computer language), 80 Realism, 9, 23, 24, 29, 31, 53, 242 Realpolitik, 29 Referent object, 35, 56, 180 2005 riots, 221 Rothschild family, 167, 194 Russian invasion of Ukraine, 4, 239 S Satire, 123–125, 151 Security elites, 7, 10, 11, 24, 27, 36, 63, 75, 110, 114, 122, 189, 192, 226, 251 Self-destructing data, 7, 145, 169, 252 Sexting, 90 Sex workers, 91–93, 162 Signal, 82 Simpson, Bart, 163 Slut walk, 217

INDEX

Smartphone apps, 145 Snapchat, 7, 15, 72, 82, 84, 87, 89, 90, 92–94, 144, 145, 158, 161–169, 239, 244, 247, 248, 251–253 Snowball sampling, 93 Social boundaries, 213 Social network analysis, 13, 76, 88, 89, 248 Social semiotics, 99 Speech act, 51, 75, 97, 147, 243 Starlink, 61, 101 Subculture, 150 Surveillance, 8, 58, 121 Switzerland, 157 Syria, 120, 154 T TAGS, 82 Taliban, 130, 250 Telegram, 2, 60, 64, 72, 82, 87, 115, 247 The Independent (newspaper), 226 Thematic analysis, 73, 98, 99, 153 TikTok, 84, 158, 169, 241 Trump, Donald, 1, 15, 57, 96, 123, 181, 183, 184, 187 Twitter, 1, 2, 6, 7, 14, 16, 34, 55, 59, 60, 63, 72–74, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 94, 97, 99, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 158, 159, 182, 187, 188, 191, 194, 200, 209, 217–219, 222, 226–228, 241, 247, 249, 250, 254 Twitter API, 82, 86, 201, 202, 247

265

U Uber, 61, 82, 101 Ukraine, 60–63, 82, 96, 101, 240 Unboxing, 151 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 225, 228, 230, 256 United Nations, 30 Urban identity, 124, 125, 128, 157, 168, 250, 252 USSR, 180, 200

V Vernacular security studies, 3, 9, 11, 14, 15, 27, 50, 52, 63, 88, 143–145, 147–149, 151, 160, 167–169, 181, 244, 251–253 Violence, 4, 14, 41, 53, 54, 84, 114–117, 120, 122, 124–130, 148, 150, 151, 153–155, 158, 164, 170, 184, 201, 214, 222, 250, 255 Viral, 88, 123, 149 Visual analysis, 73

W War on terror, 13, 23, 51–54, 109, 248 Welsh school, 7, 10, 25, 32, 40, 42–45, 50, 63, 168, 243, 252

Y YouTube, 2, 6, 15, 34, 60, 81, 82, 97, 144, 149–153, 158, 167, 168, 170, 188, 251